Cracker Barrel, Logo Changes, And Letting Go Of The Past
Kids don’t know this today, but there was a time when Pizza Hut was an event.
The Super Bowl.
The Oscars.
A trip to Pizza Hut.
Like, if the family went to Pizza Hut on a Friday night, something special was happening. It might’ve been a birthday. Maybe moms just got paid. Maybe you were lucky enough to be with another family when they were going, and you shed a single tear when they said you could come too. Or, and this was the coup de grâce, you’d reached the literary pinnacle of 4th grade and got a free personal pan pizza from Book It!. You’d walk up in the place with that button and your certificate with all the Marshawn Lynch, “You know why I’m here” energy, all 72 pounds of you could muster. That trip to Pizza Hut was sacred.
Until, one day, it wasn’t.
Maybe we got older. Maybe we discovered better pizza. Maybe the connection between pan pizza and forced literacy crept into our subconscious as an anxiety trigger we never quite got over. All I know is that a few years ago, I ordered Pizza Hut on a whim and…it just didn’t feel the same. The sacrament of my childhood had become just another delivery option. It wasn’t necessarily bad, but the magic was gone.
I thought about this last week as people lost their collective minds over Cracker Barrel’s rebrand. On one hand, the ad-guy side of me gets it. Cracker Barrel is an aging brand with a core audience that’s literally dying off while it tries to fend off new highway-staple competitors like Buc-ee’s, Sheetz, and Wawa. In a casual dining category that’s already bleeding, a pivot isn’t just about trying to be smart; it’s how they’re trying to survive.
But I also get the Cracker Barrel loyalists. Not the wild ones blaming Black people (because anytime somebody says something went “woke,” I assume they mean us). I’m talking about the folks who genuinely miss the pancakes, the biscuits and gravy, the pegboard game, and yes, that subtle hint of mid-20th-century intolerance that always made it feel slightly subversive to enjoy as a conscious Black person.
For those folks, Cracker Barrel wasn’t just a restaurant. It was special. And watching that “special” dissolve into another bland corporate rebrand feels like a little piece of themselves dissolving too.
But Cracker Barrel isn’t alone. A lot of the things we once held up as special have been stripped down, commodified, and flattened into routine. The glow wore off, the ceremony evaporated, and all that’s left is a transaction.
So, let’s take a moment to mildly mourn the joys we’ve lost to time. Those places, spaces, and experiences that live on in our subconscious, as they’ve all but disappeared from our reality.
The Mall
For some, it was a place to go. For the rest of us, it was the place to be.
For Black kids in the ‘90s and early 2000s, the mall was the original Instagram. You didn’t just go there to shop; you went there to be seen. Rolling deep with your posse, rocking your freshest fit, hoping to “accidentally” run into that girl from the other school at the food court.
The mall wasn’t about consumption; it was about performance. Foot Locker bags were trophies. A Cinnabon was a status symbol. Even sitting at the fountain felt like an achievement.
Amazon stole all that. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the convenience of one-click ordering and cardboard on my porch in 48 hours. But cardboard doesn’t flirt back. Amazon is efficient, but it’s lonely. You don’t make memories with a delivery driver (although, not judging if you have). The mall was messy, loud, and full of possibility. Shopping used to be culture. Now it’s just…logistics.
The Movies
Remember when going to the movies meant something? You had to coordinate rides, scrape up money for tickets, and smuggle a whole eight-piece spicy in through your cousin’s ol’ lady’s purse because concessions were highway robbery. Don’t act brand new, ya mama did it too.
The theater was a temple. The velvet curtains, the shared gasps, the ritual of sitting through previews rapt in imagining what cinematic treasures were coming. It was a collective experience.
Now? Movies feel like homework. “Have you seen Oppenheimer?” “Not yet, I’m behind.” Behind? Behind what? Why does going to the movies feel like filing taxes? Theaters tried to save themselves with recliners and Dolby Atmos, but the magic was already gone.
Theater-going has gone from awe to errand. And that’s sad, because for a lot of us, those sticky theater floors were the backdrop of our first date, our first kiss, or our first time realizing our parents didn’t actually like each other’s movie choices. That was special. Now it’s just streaming in 90 days.
Collecting Music
The music you listened to was one thing. But the music you paid for? That said something about you.
Black folks used to flex with their music collections. Your CD rack was a résumé. Your living room shelf was a personality test. You could walk into someone’s apartment, scan their vinyl, and instantly know if they were “good people” or someone you needed to pray for.
That Camp Lo CD? Culture. That UGK album? Street cred. That one State Property DVD? A red flag.
Today, our music lives, judgment-free, in the cloud. Spotify playlists don’t carry the same conspicuous weight as a rack of CDs on the shelf. Apple Music libraries aren’t flex-worthy like that big-ass book of music you kept in the car. Streaming made music more accessible, but it also made it invisible. Nobody’s impressed by your algorithm like they were on how you organized your albums.
The collection mattered because it was tangible. It was proof that you invested in your taste. You can’t size someone up by their Spotify history, unless they’ve been listening to Ja Rule unironically, in which case, judge with impunity.
Air Travel
Flying used to be aspirational. Suits, fancy hats, ladies wearing gloves, and whatnot. Luggage with stickers from places you passively bragged about. Flight attendants who made you feel like Don Draper.
Now? Air travel is something akin to the 2000s Chinatown bus with turbulence. The glamour is gone, replaced by baggage fees, middle seat fights over armrests, and boarding groups that feel like the draft.
Black families treated flying as a moment. My mother would make me dress nice for the plane, like we were about to meet the Queen of England. Today? Folks board in Crocs and bonnets, wearing what I can generously describe as “sleep clothes” in the middle of the afternoon. The airport used to be a scene. Now, it’s just a way-station.
It still gets us where we’re going, but it no longer feels like going somewhere.
Food Delivery
Getting delivery used to be a treat. Pizza Fridays. Chinese food on report card day. That knock at the door was thrilling, food was coming to your house.
Now? Delivery is just another Tuesday. Burgers, wings, gas station snacks. DoorDash killed the novelty by making it omnipresent. I can literally order a single Gatorade and a packet of Top Ramen and have someone bring it to my door. That’s not special. That’s lazy.
My kids even roll their eyes now when I say we’re just going to order something online. It’s as if getting delivery went from, “Let me show you how much I love you” to, “Here, pick something to eat because I don’t care” and we just live like that now.
When the momentarily luxurious becomes the default, the magic has evaporated.
Holiday Decorations
Holiday decorating used to be neighborhood competition. Folks would go all out, and you’d drive around just to see what the Johnsons did with their Christmas lights. Not only that, but your family probably had an archive of heirloom-esque ornaments collected and curated over years. You’d climb up into the attic, pull out that dusty box of old keepsakes, and reminisce about the holidays of yore while stringing up baubles from the disco era.
Now? You can buy your entire holiday spirit in a kit at Target. Inflatable snowmen, plug-and-play Santa. It’s neat. It’s uniform. It’s soulless.
The difference is, holiday decorating used to be a personal journey through your family’s history. Now it’s perishable junk that’s a backdrop for The Gram.
Taking Pictures
Taking pictures was once sacred. You rationed film. You struck the pose you felt memorialized the moment, and then you waited for Walgreens to develop your roll, hoping that your cousin didn’t close their eyes in every shot.
As we got older, we’d collect our crew for the classic club shot in front of an airbrushed background because no one would know you weren’t in VIP because you looked the part.
Now? We take 200 selfies a day and delete 198 of them before we hit send. Pictures aren’t keepsakes; they’re clutter.
Black families especially know the weight of photographs. That shoebox of pictures under your grandmother’s bed is an archive, a testimony, a legacy. Your iCloud dump? Just food pics, parking lot locations, and chaos.
All of this begs the question: what happened?
Some of it is capitalism. Rituals got stripped down into transactions. Ceremonies got turned into efficiencies. We demanded convenience, and in the process, lost the frills as penance for impatience.
Some of it is us. We got older. Things that felt magical at 12 feel routine at 42. Candy doesn’t taste as sweet when you have your own money to buy it anytime. Nostalgia tricks us into thinking the past was better, but what we’re really missing is ourselves.
And some of it is inevitable. Change is the only constant. Brands rebrand. Restaurants pivot. Institutions modernize because standing still is death.
We can’t bring Pizza Hut back to Book It! glory. The mall won’t ever feel like the 1990s again. Flying will never be glamorous unless you’re in first class on an airline owned by Middle Eastern royalty.
What we can do is help our kids find “special” in their own rituals. Their own Pizza Huts. Their own Cracker Barrels. Their own malls, even if those malls are just Roblox or TikTok feeds.
Maybe the solution isn’t to cling to the old, but to honor it, laugh at it, and then let it go. Special doesn’t live in the brand’s permanence. It lives in the moment when it meant the most to you.
And, to be honest. Cracker Barrel and most of our nostalgic faves were never really that good. We just didn’t get out as much.
Cracker Barrel was good enough. Pizza Hut was good enough. Sizzler, Old Country Buffet, Blockbuster, all good enough. The magic was never in the biscuits or the VHS cases. The magic was in us.
So instead of crying about logos or lamenting the past, let’s create new memories worth being nostalgic about one day. Let’s remember that nothing stays special forever, and that’s okay. Because specialness isn’t something you preserve in amber. It’s something you embrace in the moment and live in real time.
So let Cracker Barrel rebrand. The pancakes will still taste the same. And if they don’t? We can always knuckle up and go to Waffle House.
Corey Richardson is originally from Newport News, Va., and currently lives in Chicago, Ill. Ad guy by trade, Dad guy in life, and grilled meat enthusiast, Corey spends his time crafting words, cheering on beleaguered Washington DC sports franchises, and yelling obscenities at himself on golf courses. As the founder of The Instigation Department, you can follow him on Substack to keep up with his work.
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