Cracker Barrel Gets a Clue

Some companies hire people whose entire function is to keep the companies image "politically correct" and to steer the company away from making huge PR mistakes.  Sometimes these employees do a good job, and sometimes they need to be fired because they are so brain dead that they can't function.  For example Cracker Barrel and the decision to ditch the Duck Dynasty merchandise. 

I suspect that a case can be made that selling Duck Dynasty (DD) merchandise really just adds to A&E's bottom line since the Robertson's don't own the rights to it.   So you could claim that not selling the stuff was a way of supporting Phil.  This would have been a total lie, but you could make that case. 

What really happened was some women most likely the VP in charge of PR, Feeling Important and Socially Acceptable crap that has nothing to do with running restaurants, decided that Phil Robertson's remarks made her feel bad.  Because she felt bad, that makes Phil a bad guy, so he must really be a homophobic racist like they said.  How anyone working at a company with a racist name like "cracker barrel"  comes off with such a feeling of superiority is beyond me. 

So despite the fact that 1) no one cared that Cracker Barrel sold DD junk and 2) A&E was involved in a PR nightmare because they decided to sabotage the biggest money TV show that a cable channel ever had and 3) millions of Americans that don't give a crap about a bunch of rednecks that look like ZZ Top rejects, were rallying to the side of the latest victims of the anti-American culture war; the marketing genius at Cracker Barrel decided to jump in, with both feet on the wrong side of an issue that they had no stake in. 

For those of you who don't know on Friday Cracker Barrel announced it was dropping some of its DD merchandise.  This was meant to look like a support of the pro-Butt Sex crowd.  By Sunday night Cracker Barrel changed it mind.  According to the company:

Customer outcry, the company said, forced it to reevaluate its decision to stop carrying merchandise from the popular reality TV show after controversial comments made by the show's star in a recent magazine interview.

"You told us we made a mistake," the company said on its Facebook page. "And, you weren't shy about it. You wrote, you called and you took to social media to express your thoughts and feelings. You flat out told us we were wrong. We listened. Today, we are putting all our Duck Dynasty products back in our stores."

Does anyone know what day of the week Cracker Barrel makes a ton of its sales?  It's Sunday.  Specifically Sunday from 11:00 am to 2 pm.  This is an oddity in the restaurant world.  Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights are the big money makers for most eateries.  Sunday lunch is as big for Cracker Barrel as a weekend night and in some locations its bigger.  So the news comes out Friday that Cracker Barrel is siding A&E against the Duck boys.  There is a pretty good number of people already worked up since Phil got fired because he said he likes vagina better than some mans hairy ass.  Folks got themselves tuned into this story.  That's just the time that Cracker Barrel started dis'n straight white people and hate'n heterosexuals.

Here is what I think happened.  Friday night was a little slow as the word started getting around about cracker barrel.  Saturday sales slacked off even more.  By the time the Sunday eat'n out after church crowd found out that Cracker Barrel is run by a bunch of closet homosexual agenda pushing, liberal, nut cases, they decided to eat someplace else.  I think sales took a hit this weekend.  Cracker Barrel, a nominally southern company, learned a lesson fast.  People who like to eat ham steaks, biscuits gravy, and pecan pie after church on Sunday ain't big on supporting butt sex. 

I don't think a letter campaign had anything to do with Cracker Barrel changing its mind.  I don't think Cracker Barrel has changed its mind, they still believe speaking out against boy on boy butt sex is wrong.  They just figured out that they don't have a dog in this fight and publicly rooting against the favorite is bad for business.