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Rachel Love just wants to make Cracker Barrel great again.
The 38-year-old Tennessee resident and self-proclaimed Cracker Barrel loyalist first caught the restaurant chain’s attention after she strolled into an Old Country Store location in April and noticed things were different.
The place was brighter, the antiquities were missing from the walls — and the peg games were gone, she told Fox News Digital.
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Love shared a TikTok video of the restaurant’s new look, along with a caption that read, “When Cracker Barrel took away the last piece of nostalgia you had left.” Her post quickly went viral.
Love’s video created such a buzz that Cracker Barrel sent her a gift basket.
It turns out her sentiments about an early test concept for the restaurant were shared by other Cracker Barrel lovers as well.
Many have taken to social media in recent days to vent their displeasure with the wider rollout and rebrand, which includes a new text-only logo.
“I feel like they ruined a good thing,” Love told Fox News Digital.
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Sarah Moore, Cracker Barrel’s chief marketing officer, told Fox News Digital in May that the classic peg games, rocking chairs and the “things you love about us” would remain.
Love said she heard the same thing from Cracker Barrel’s TikTok account, which replied to one of her videos.
“While a few things may look different, we’re not changing who we are … just shining things up a bit,” Cracker Barrel commented.
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The reply has since been removed, Love said.
She believes the company’s social media folks deleted the comment because “they realized they were feeding us a line.”
Rachel Love shows off the note she received in a Cracker Barrel gift basket. (Fox News Digital)
Using a gift card she received in her gift basket, Love returned to the Cracker Barrel in June with her parents and son.
“It just didn’t feel like Cracker Barrel anymore,” she recalled. “It felt more like any other big chain restaurant – polished and manufactured but lacking soul.”
“I don’t have a business degree, but I have common sense.”
Love also believes that “the quality of the food has gone downhill significantly.”
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She said, “I was honestly shocked by the biscuits. They weren’t the soft, buttery biscuits I remember. They resembled dinner rolls that were hard and flat.”
Her “go-to” meal is the meatloaf dinner with mac and cheese, green beans and mashed potatoes.
A Cracker Barrel loyalist claims the quality of Cracker Barrel’s food has declined. “The mashed potatoes had an odd consistency.” (Rachel Love)
Love was complimentary of the meatloaf and the mac and cheese — but said the “green beans still tasted like they were straight from a can, only heated for a few minutes.”
She added that “the mashed potatoes had an odd consistency – dry, lumpy and sticky, as if half of them wouldn’t even come off the serving spoon.”
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She said Cracker Barrel executives might be better off focusing on the food than changing the restaurant’s look and feel.
“For a restaurant known for its nostalgia, it’s like, what sets you apart from everybody else now?” Love said.
The nostalgia that customers love about Cracker Barrel is missing in its newly remodeled restaurants, many are claiming on social media. (Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Another social media video posted by @CoachDuggs earlier this month that shows the interior of a remodeled Cracker Barrel also went viral.
The caption reads, “At a remodeled Cracker Barrel. I hate it.”
CRACKER BARREL CUSTOMERS ‘HATE’ RESTAURANT CHAIN’S NEW LOOK IN VIRAL SOCIAL MEDIA VIDEOS
Duggs, a 37-year-old Florida resident who asked not to be identified by his real name, told Fox News Digital the classic look made him feel like “you were about to sit down for an actual home-cooked meal from someone’s southern grandma.”
“The aesthetics matched the food,” Duggs said.
Now, he said, it feels “like we’re in a kind of warehouse where they’ve hung knickknacks on the wall.”
A Cracker Barrel customer said the restaurant’s classic look made it feel like “you were about to sit down for an actual home-cooked meal from someone’s southern grandma.” Now, things are different, he said. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“It’s just — it’s not the same.”
Love described the remodeled restaurant as “sterile” and “depressing.”
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A Cracker Barrel spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement that the response to the remodeled locations “has been overwhelmingly positive” and that the changes “were informed by direct input from our guests and team members alike.”
Cracker Barrel added that “there may be a vocal minority who feel differently.”
Cracker Barrel claims that “a vocal minority” are objecting to the changes. (Rachel Love)
“However, the strong performance of these locations affirms that we are moving in the right direction,” the statement continued in part.
Fox News Digital also reached out about Love’s latest comments but did not immediately hear back from the company.
Duggs said he’s not “inclined to go back to a Cracker Barrel” unless it’s the old model.
“Do not do this to any more stores, or you’re going to tank this company.”
“I’m going to question whether or not, you know — is this Cracker Barrel remodeled?” he said.
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“Am I going to be going to the Cracker Barrel that I know and love, or am I going to be setting myself up for disappointment?”
Love said the only “saving grace” for Cracker Barrel is to preserve the locations that haven’t been touched yet.
A Cracker Barrel customer (not pictured) said he will not go to a remodeled restaurant. Instead, he strongly prefers the classic look. (Eric Reed/AP Images for Cracker Barrel Old Country Store)
“Do not do this to any more stores, or you’re going to tank this company,” she said.
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“I don’t have a business degree, but I have common sense, and I can see what people in the world are saying.”
