After Trump meltdown, Cracker Barrel bends the knee and replaces CEO

This story originally appeared on Them.

After a completely nonsensical MAGA meltdown over a supposedly “woke” rebrand last year, the current CEO of Cracker Barrel is being replaced.

The American restaurant and gift shop company announced on July 27 that current CEO and director Julie Masino, who led the controversial rebrand, will be stepping down on August 10. While she will remain with Cracker Barrel in an advisory capacity until October 9, she will be replaced by David Deno as CEO the same day that she steps down.

To be clear, there was nothing particularly “woke” about the Cracker Barrel rebrand (which didn’t last very long) to begin with. Introduced in August 2025, it marked the first major rebrand in the company’s history, simplifying the iconic logo and axing the image of a man leaning against a barrel. And no, the barrel guy wasn’t a racist depiction, if you’re wondering if that’s what led to the anti-woke backlash. It was a depiction of Cracker Barrel founder Dan Evins’ Uncle Herschel, according to CBS News.

The one vaguely “woke” sentiment connected to the rebrand is a sentiment that the company posted to its website at the time, stating, “Rather than just showing one person, we wanted to feature lots of people. The idea was to celebrate the diversity of all our guests with a logo that represented our continued passion for pleasing people of all races, colors, and genders.”

For some reason, this caused such a conservative firestorm that President Donald Trump felt the need to comment on it via Truth Social, calling for the company to go back to the old logo and “Make Cracker Barrel a WINNER again.” That negative reaction from the public was reflected in the company’s subsequent finances. Per CBS News, the company lost nearly $100 million in market value after releasing the new logo. Shortly after releasing the new logo (and after Trump’s post), Cracker Barrel scrapped it and decided to keep the original design.

This is only the latest instance of conservatives totally melting down over some absolute nonsense because of perceived “wokeness” from a beloved brand, a trend that has unfortunately pervaded the 2020s. Right-wingers have particularly come down hard on corporate Pride campaigns, most notably during the summer of 2023, during which over a dozen brands faced conservative harassment for their Pride month collections.

Actress and influencer Dylan Mulvaney was perhaps the face of that harassment, after a controversial collaboration with Bud Light led to massive backlash — and somehow, the President is still talking about her three full years later. Unfortunate, but also kind of iconic on Mulvaney’s part at least.

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