While retail steals the main focus around the vacations, restaurants may thrive throughout the season. Thanksgiving is often the busiest day of the 12 months for Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, the chain known for Southern eats and gift shops carrying nostalgic tchotchkes and apparel. Heat-and-serve meals, including turkey dinners, in addition to an assortment of ornaments, toys and gift baskets are within the highlight for Cracker Barrel this winter.
Cracker Barrel’s latest holiday push arrives amid a high-stakes strategic reinvention of the brand, which has copped to waning relevance and is contending with fresh proxy fights from investors ahead of its annual shareholder meeting on Nov. 21. The long-term transformation plan involves revamps of stores, a massive menu overhaul, a greater focus on digital and off-premise dining and an evolution of Cracker Barrel’s brand.
Cracker Barrel CMO Sarah Moore
Permission granted by Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc.
Cracker Barrel in July appointed Sarah Moore, a hospitality industry veteran, as CMO to bolster appeal with a more modern audience. The 55-year-old company is expanding its first rewards program and rejiggering its marketing strategy to higher capitalize on TikTok, an app that’s propelling products like embroidered sweatshirts to Gen Z virality. Comparable sales at Cracker Barrel restaurants were up 0.4% in the corporate’s fiscal fourth quarter, with menu prices increasing 4.2%, while comparable retail sales fell 4.2%.
“Sarah’s hospitality focused leadership and deep experience evolving brands and accelerating growth across all disciplines of promoting will help us drive our strategic transformation and brand love as we reclaim our position as an industry leader,” said Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino, who took on the highest role last 12 months, in a statement around Moore’s appointment.
Moore, who joined Cracker Barrel from MGM Resorts International, recently spoke with Marketing Dive about her outlook on partnerships, loyalty and consumer price consciousness.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
MARKETING DIVE: You joined a just few months ago but are already entering a vital sales time. How early were you starting to take into consideration Thanksgiving and what are you focused on?
SARAH MOORE: Because it’s such a vital window, the work on this season began long before I joined. The team put a lot focus into driving innovation around the vacation season and exposing the storytelling around how the the brand stays true to its roots, delivering something for everyone. We are focusing on a sense of discovery with some new items, whether it could be through the menu or through our retail store.
How have you ever chosen the proper items to promote around Thanksgiving?
We just celebrated our fifty fifth birthday, and one thing I learned coming into this brand is how much affinity there may be with our core customers. This evolution is about staying true to who we’re, but finding new ways to showcase the things that our core customers love while opening those up to potential new customers.
We took a few of our items that we’re known for and we showcased them in new ways [such as Cinnamon Swirl French Toast and a DIY Hot Chocolate Bar]. You’ll start to see that in the vacation menu.
An even bigger trend for dine-in restaurants is winning over the following generation in Gen Z while not losing sight of people that already just like the brand. How do you gauge what’s correct to switch up?
It’s about retaining a balance of knowing who we’re but meeting prospective new customers where they’re. Our retail store has such a sense of discovery that products are going viral on a regular basis. If you go to TikTok, you’ll see Gen Z is loving a few of our apparel. We’re getting compared to Anthropologie when it comes to our quality.
Shaboozey [the alt-country singer] posted himself in front of Cracker Barrel a few weeks ago. We’re coming up in top podcast conversations. This brand has a lot of cultural connection and we have now a real opportunity to proceed fueling that, but we want to recognize those customers, initiate that dialogue and invite them in to come experience the remainder of what Cracker Barrel has to offer.
When you consider TikTok and the broader cultural connection, is that something Cracker Barrel used to underleverage? As a CMO, did you see some things where you went, “We’re not doing enough here”?
Absolutely. There’s two parts to it: TikTok, as a channel, is emerging. Quite a lot of the marketing teams at different brands are still learning how to use these channels. But I do think that the character of our brand has been humble and it has been a bit more earnest. Again, we’re organically showing up within the conversation, so it’s on us to reach out and have interaction with those customers since the product is there.
When you discuss popping up on podcasts or TikTok, those are very fast-moving conversations. How do you retain your finger on the heart beat?
There isn’t a single tool or service that’s gonna do this for us. It’s in regards to the scrappiness of our team. We’re finding these things because our team is being attentive. It’s about real-time agility but in addition knowing the spaces that your brand’s gonna play in. Sometimes you get surprised: We were mentioned on the Smartless podcast by Jason Bateman.
You have a background within the hospitality industry. What is the most useful thing you’ve brought over?
I used to be within the hospitality industry for 20 years. It’s all about understanding the guests’ mindset, why they’re selecting to spend their discretionary dollars with you and ensuring that they feel grateful, appreciated and valued for that call. In the restaurant industry, there may be a lot of noise. Nobody delivers greater hospitality than Cracker Barrel, in order that’s very ownable and it’s one in all the explanations I got here to this brand.
There is a few overlap together with your past role in relation to loyalty. Cracker Barrel last 12 months launched a rewards program. What has your approach to constructing that out been?
Our loyalty program continues to be in its infancy. We’re only a 12 months old, but we’re thrilled with the momentum that we’ve seen. We have over 6 million members, so the organic growth has been remarkable. The most useful members mean more to us from a frequency standpoint and from a customer value standpoint. Our ability to engage with them in a meaningful way is thru CRM and ensuring that they know they’ve first access or get sneak peeks. It’s that they know that we’re prioritizing them and rewarding them for his or her loyalty, but in addition driving engagement with this system in a profitable way. We know that is going to be an incredible growth mechanism for us.
Have you shaken up your approach to marketing services in any respect? We’re talking about social listening and loyalty being, in some cases, newer areas for Cracker Barrel.
A brand marketing organization all the time has to be the proper ecosystem of partners, especially as our worlds change 12 months over 12 months. As a part of our transformation, we’re taking a hard have a look at who the proper partners are to go on this journey with us. It’s definitely something we’re . We’ll have more to share in the longer term.
Across the restaurant category, price consciousness and value are big themes. Cracker Barrel has emphasized value in its recent ads. How are you striking a balance between that and communicating hospitality?
It’s a good problem to have. We have a lot of emotion that comes with the brand. We have incredible promotional windows that we open. The nature of our menu is built-in quality, value and abundance. For us, it’s just ensuring that we’re telling the proper messages at the proper time. It’s about paying really close attention to what channels are activated where and who the proper customer is. It’s a dance, but we aren’t swinging too far someway.
Are the vacations the actual “on” time for Cracker Barrel’s paid media?
In this window, it’s about full channel integration and ensuring that we’re speaking consistently across all of our channels. This holiday season, we’re going to up our storytelling channels. That goes again back to social media, our use of content creators and PR. That will probably be balanced out by strong paid media support, but the main focus for us is just not one channel over the opposite.
What is at the highest of your wishlist as CMO?
There’s a sense of “for those who know, you recognize” with Cracker Barrel, and that’s driving a lot of that virality on TikTok. As the CMO, my biggest wish for this brand is for everybody to see what those that know see. Cracker Barrel has a lot to offer, from apparel to gifting to home to toys to kids to candy. It is curated higher than any of your favorite little boutiques.
Is there something I didn’t ask that you simply’d want to highlight?
Another marketing lever that we’re going to start pushing on is partnerships and activations. We showed up at ChainFest this 12 months for the primary time ever. We know we have now a great opportunity and a lot of brands want to partner with us. Creating interesting collaborations to showcase the evolved positioning of Cracker Barrel is absolutely exciting.
Sometimes, with brand collaborations, it’s an earned media play and a little bit of a head-scratcher. It gets a headline but doesn’t construct long-term equity. How do you assess the proper partners based on Cracker Barrel’s positioning?
There isn’t a method to do it. We’re constructing a new partnership framework that’s going to ultimately discover and vet what partners do what. Is it an earned play, is it a long-term new business driver, is it a revenue generator or is it an operational partner? Some of them might just be great buzz opportunities. Sometimes you wish the head-scratcher, but there’s a time and a place for all of the right partnerships.
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