[Federalist] While driving through northern Arkansas on the way to a wedding in rural Missouri earlier this year, I decided to treat an old college friend from Bangladesh to a meal at that bastion of Americana: Cracker Barrel.
I hadn’t been to a Cracker Barrel in years, but it was just as I remembered it — the cluttered general store area full of knick-knacks, the kitschy memorabilia cluttered on the wall, the intentionally dated homestyle atmosphere, and the relatively quick service. It was, in a word, quaint. Exactly as advertised. My friend was not particularly impressed. When he expressed that he didn’t get why Cracker Barrel is so great, I responded, in jest, "That’s why you’ll never be an American."
The executives who run Cracker Barrel obviously share the same opinion as my Bangladeshi friend, since they’re replacing the old-timey charm that makes Cracker Barrel a special place with the same soulless, whitewashed aesthetic that can only be dreamed up and approved in an equally soulless corporate boardroom or at a high-rise consultancy firm.
The typical Cracker Barrel’s aesthetic is very obviously an idealized version of yesteryear’s America, but in a natural, sincere way. It effortlessly harkens back to a simpler time — a time your grandparents knew and lived in — when mom-and-pop general stores and diners hadn’t yet given way to the march of progress. And that’s the entire appeal of the restaurant: For an hour or so, you can go back and indulge in a bit of harmless nostalgia.
By contrast, this new aesthetic tries to pay lip service to that same sense of wizened charm but ultimately comes off as spiritually sterile, manufactured, and hollow. Every decorative item on the wall in the video above looks like it could have come from Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Hearth and Hand line at Target — trying way too hard and not enough at the same time. 
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