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We have five Cracker Barrel Restaurants within a 20-mile radius of my house. We have only eaten at those places if it was with friends who specified that restaurant. I find the service to be slow and the food worse, it is a place where many rural conservative people like to eat.
OMG I gave Olive Garden a negative review because they made us wait 45 minutes on a Saturday evening and when we got inside, the place was practically empty. They sent me a $50 gift card which I allowed to expire because I hate that kind of business model, intentionally making customers wait just to make the place look like it's in high demand. For mediocre food.
This was pre-covid and I have no intention of ever going back.
Cracker Barrel badly needs to update their decor and design if they want to attract younger people. Every other chain periodically refreshes their design/decor periodically
Cracker Barrel needs to add guest internet if they want to attract travelers, which seems to be their goal since they place stores near interstates. But they still don't have internet service for their guests. Travelers often want to get online during their meal.
Cracker Barrel requires guests to stand in line to pay at the cashier, and they are stuck in line with gift store purchasers. No good in this day and age, especially for elderly and workers pressed for time during their lunch hour.
The last time I went to a CB, it was full of large Hispanic families having meals together. Maybe that's their go-to place now instead of cooking at home? At any rate, it makes for ridiculously long wait times (over an hour, in this case), so maybe seniors have given up.
We had a Shakeys in the upper Midwest in the '70s and '80s (originally had the banjo players and balloons for the kids) that shifted to the lunch buffet. During my high school days, it was packed M-F with students from five or more local high schools and a couple of colleges.
Still miss the mojo potatoes.
They still have about five locations in SOCAL and many in the Philippines.
Cracker Barrel badly needs to update their decor and design if they want to attract younger people. Every other chain periodically refreshes their design/decor periodically
Cracker Barrel needs to add guest internet if they want to attract travelers, which seems to be their goal since they place stores near interstates. But they still don't have internet service for their guests. Travelers often want to get online during their meal.
Cracker Barrel requires guests to stand in line to pay at the cashier, and they are stuck in line with gift store purchasers. No good in this day and age, especially for elderly and workers pressed for time during their lunch hour.
I agree that restaurants should have free wifi which is so easy to do.
As for paying after standing in line could be a drag. They should do something like McDonalds does, have the screens right before the counter for people to log in to preorder. With so much computer technology these days, they should be able to pay in a phone app too by scanning the CB receipt that would have one of those bar codes, like TV shows have been using, so has the ASPCA. You scan the bar code, it will send a donation.
Not offering and not using the latest technology could kill CB like some stores are now out of business even though they started catalog shopping such as Sears with their Christmas wish book.
Somehow I don't think "free Wifi" would attract seniors, if that's the topic here. It's kind of nice to see families and friends sitting on the front porch rocking in the rocking chairs actually CONVERSING with each other while they wait rather than compulsively staring down at phones...
To me, that's one of its enduring charms. Never change!
Free WiFi. We tried that here, paid for by the Town. The business people/eateries went bat **** crazy. They didn't want it because "people willsit and stay all day and only buy a cup of coffee", so we didn't do it.
Then we had a smallish coffee shop/bakery open up (which caused the existing one to complain that they'd been promised an exclusive no competition business license. They hadn't been. This business was also the one that led the charge against the free WiFi) that offered WiFi. Then the businesses complained about the Town not installing it a couple years earlier when they opposed it.
Then they wondered why I had a bad attitude about them as an elected official.
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