What CEOs Are Saying: Cracker Barrel, Darden, and Dave & Buster's

Lessons from three restaurant earnings calls, plus what to do when your logo change breaks the Internet

Restaurants are in a delicate spot in 2025.

Major operators are reporting labor inflation of 3-4% and commodity cost increases of 2.5-3.5%, while consumers grow increasingly selective about where they spend to eat out.

Last week’s earnings calls reveal how three restaurant companies (Cracker Barrel, Darden, and Dave & Buster’s) are adapting, or at least trying to adapt, to that pretty hardscrabble reality.

We start with the elephant in the room: the logo change that had all of America up in arms.

Saving Uncle Herschel

Nothing illustrates the perils of brand transformation quite like Cracker Barrel’s rebrand and spectacular reversal. When CEO Julie Masino unveiled a minimalist logo and modernized restaurant designs in August, she probably expected some pushback. She got an uprising.

Traffic has fallen 8% since the chain initially changed its logo on August 19, the company revealed in its September earnings call. The backlash was severe—was this new logo “woke”? Why are they trashing our collective memories? many people wondered in online posts. President Donald Trump weighed in. Within a week, Cracker Barrel was in full retreat.