The Cracker Barrel in West Palm Beach, Florida, on August 26, 2025.

A week after a culture-war firestorm threatened to engulf its country charm, Cracker Barrel reversed plans to spruce up its vintage logo of an overalls-clad old timer leaning against a barrel.

“Our new logo is going away and our ‘Old Timer’ will remain,” the company said Tuesday.

Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal, hailed the public retreat as a victory for conservative critics who led the backlash against Bud Light’s promotion with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney and Target’s Pride Month collection.

The successful pressure campaign from Robby Starbuck and Matt Walsh accusing Cracker Barrel of bowing to "wokeness" and distancing itself from its country roots and conservative values showed the political right “has learned how to flex its muscles in the marketplace,” Rufo wrote in his newsletter.

But it was the reaction of one man that seemed to really put the casual dining chain over a barrel.

One day after President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to condemn the rebrand, the company capitulated.

“We thank our guests for sharing your voices and love for Cracker Barrel. We said we would listen, and we have," the company said in a statement.

The White House quickly took credit for the reversal. Cracker Barrel announced its decision to drop the new logo shortly after speaking to the White House, according to Deputy White House chief of staff Taylor Budowich. "They wanted the President to know that they heard him, along with customer response,” Budowich said on social media.

Cracker Barrel did not respond to a request for comment.

Seizing the moment, the White House posted an image of Trump, his arm resting on a barrel. "Go woke, go broke," the post said, borrowing the rallying cry of conservative activists.

Presidents wield considerable influence over the corporate world but none more than Trump. His expansive use of executive power and iron grip on the GOP base has given him an unusual degree of sway over how businesses operate, from taking a 10% equity stake in Intel and making the federal government the chipmaker’s biggest shareholder to squeezing Apple for another $100 billion investment commitment to securing pro bono work from white-shoe law firms.

In cases such as American Eagle and Bud Light, Trump has weighed in before when corporations got tangled up in the culture wars, but the Cracker Barrel incident underscores how “the gravitational pull of Donald Trump and Trumpism” now shapes “what counts as a cultural red line on the right,” said Paul Argenti, a professor of corporate communication at Dartmouth.

Conservative activists agitating against what they say is a left-wing takeover of the private sector now have a key ally. Trump has used his bully pulpit to amplify that message and the power of his office to take matters into his own hands.

Just hours after he took the oath of office on Jan. 20, Trump began issuing executive orders to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, put pressure on federal contractors to end “illegal DEI discrimination” and directed federal agencies to draw up lists of private companies that could be investigated for their diversity policies.

No longer neutral spaces, corporations are now “symbolic battlefields,” Argenti said.

“Trump catalyzed the environment, but now MAGA activism has its own momentum and corporations know it,” he said. “What’s changed since Trump’s last term is that executives can no longer assume these campaigns are fringe. They have to assume a small spark can ignite a national firestorm.”

David Primo, professor of political science and business administration at the University of Rochester in New York, said the logo controversy was “a perfect storm for Cracker Barrel.”

The chain’s loyalists were already riled up over a dramatic makeover of the menu and the country feel of the restaurants to appeal to more diners.

“They were in the middle of a rebrand that was floundering, making them a ripe target for a piling on from conservative activists concerned about the brand’s past support for social causes,” Primo said.

Trump’s Truth Social post was “the nail in the coffin for the logo redesign,” he said. What made the chain vulnerable to "woke" allegations was the decision to take progressive positions at the urging of activist investors and employees.

“Corporate America sowed the seeds for situations like this by putting their finger to the political winds in recent years,” Primo said. “Once you start letting politics drive your branding, whether it be from the left or the right, you now put social activists in control of your brand.”

Starbuck announced another “major victory” on Wednesday that Cracker Barrel removed a page celebrating Pride Month events and rainbow rocking chairs.

“Let this be a message to all companies: It is now socially unacceptable to promote trans causes or DEI and it’s unacceptable to use our money for Pride events,” he wrote on social media.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump spoke for the 'go woke, go broke' crowd. Did Cracker Barrel listen?

Reporting by Jessica Guynn, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect