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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Business
Gaya Gupta

Cracker Barrel CEO to step down after overseeing logo backlash last year

Julie Felss Masino gestures with both hands raised while speaking at an event
Julie Felss Masino, president and CEO of Cracker Barrel, speaks during 13D Monitor’s Active-Passive Investor Summit in New York City on 21 October 2025. Photograph: Jeenah Moon/Reuters

Cracker Barrel’s CEO, Julie Masino, is stepping down, the restaurant announced on Monday, nearly a year after the company was swept into a political maelstrom over proposed modernizations to its branding.

Critics on social media denounced the Tennessee-based rustic restaurant chain as “woke” as well as “sterile and soulless” after it unveiled an updated logo that removed Uncle Herschel, the overall-clad man leaning against a barrel in the restaurant’s original logo, last August. Donald Trump weighed in on the updates soon after, posting: “WTF is wrong with Cracker Barrel?!” and demanding on social media that the company “admit a mistake”.

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