Most restaurant chains come with at least a few scandals, but Cracker Barrel has had
an almost shocking number of scandals, lawsuits, and accusations leveled at them, especially
considering they're a relatively new chain — in the grand scheme of things, at least.
Here are some huge scandals that may haunt Cracker Barrel for quite a while to come.
In 2004, Cracker Barrel was embroiled in several scandals, including a lawsuit brought by the
NAACP and an investigation by the Justice Department.
The actions were instigated by claims that black customers in several states were subjected
to not only the restaurant's segregation policies, but other shockingly terrible types of treatment.
The list of accusations was long, and included: segregated seating, seating and serving black
customers after white customers, subjecting customers to racial slurs, and, shockingly,
serving black customers food that had been fished out of the garbage.
Servers were also allegedly allowed to refuse service to customers, based solely on their
skin color.
The Justice Department investigation came first, and Cracker Barrel wasn't fined for
their findings.
Instead, they agreed to put anti-discrimination measures and training programs in place, along
with hiring outside auditors and undercover diners to monitor their progress.
In spite of the 2004 investigations and settlements, Cracker Barrel has had continued problems
with accusations of racism as recently as 2018.
Cracker Barrel was hiring in 1991, but thanks to a newly implemented HR policy, they were
only hiring people who weren't gay.
The policy didn't just forbid hiring gay employees, but they also fired at least nine current
employees because of their sexual orientation.
Think it can't get worse?
The New York Times interviewed one employee that had been fired under the policy, Cheryl
Summerville.
She had been working at Cracker Barrel for three years, and said:
"They said they didn't really want to fire me, because the policy was really aimed at
effeminate men and women who have masculine traits who might be working as waiters or
waitresses.
But I said I couldn't just let them fire other people and keep me, because it would just
be a matter of time before the policy caught up with me, too."
Cracker Barrel's response was bizarre: They finally rescinded the policy, but didn't really
accept any fault.
Instead they called it a, quote, "well-intentioned over-reaction to the perceived values of our
customers and their comfort levels with these individuals."
It wasn't until 2002 that Cracker Barrel added sexual orientation to their non-discrimination
policy, after scoring a dismal "zero" on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality
Index.
“I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.”
In 2013, Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson went on record with some seriously controversial
anti-gay comments that led to his suspension from the show.
What does that have to do with Cracker Barrel?
The company weighed in on the side of everyone who was offended by the remarks and Robertson's
anti-gay rhetoric.
Briefly.
According to Forbes, their first move was to announce that while they were going to
continue to carry some Duck Dynasty-related merchandise, they were removing products that
might offend guests.
Essentially, they pulled the A&E-produced Duck Dynasty products, but kept selling the
more independently produced Duck Commander products, including books like Miss Kay's
Duck Commander Kitchen Cookbook and the Duck Commander Devotional book.
Cracker Barrel was the first retailer to make the move, but it took just about 24 hours
for them to backpedal, hard.
They issued an official statement that read, in part, "Our intent was to avoid offending,
but that's just what we've done.
You told us we made a mistake.
And, you weren't shy about it.
… You flat out told us we were wrong.
We listened."
All Duck Dynasty products were returned to shelves.
There's a bit of a long story behind the lawsuit Cracker Barrel was served with in 2018, and
the newspaper The Tennessean says it started back in the 1970s.
That's when Earl "Peanutt" Montgomery was busy co-writing songs with country music legend
George Jones, and it's also when Jones pitched him an idea.
The plan was to have Montgomery produce an album that would be something of a gift.
Proceeds from the album would essentially be Montgomery's retirement package.
That was the plan, at least.
The album was recorded, but when Jones started to get shuffled from recording studio to recording
studio, it was never released.
Fast forward to 2017, when Jones' widow, Nancy, sold all his intellectual property to Concord.
Concord then made a deal with Cracker Barrel to release the album, and the move resulted
in Montgomery filing a $5 million lawsuit.
He claimed that Nancy Jones didn't have the right to sell the record in the first place,
and they definitely didn't have permission to release it.
A fatal shooting at a Cleveland Cracker Barrel has resulted in a long investigation and lawsuits
filed by family members of the people there.
In 2012, Kate Allen was at Cracker Barrel with her husband, Kevin, and their two daughters.
They were celebrating the birthday of one of their girls, but she was also telling her
husband she was leaving him in the wake of numerous domestic violence charges, convictions,
and reports filed with local police.
After the conversation, Kevin Allen left the restaurant, returned with a shotgun, then
shot his wife and two daughters.
Police arrived, and the shooter was shot and killed at the restaurant.
While his wife and one daughter passed at the restaurant, the other daughter passed away
about a month later.
Not long after, Kate Allen's family filed a lawsuit, condemning Cracker Barrel and the
manager for not offering to help when they say she approached them for it.
According to eyewitnesses, Kevin Allen had taken his wife's car keys before leaving to
fetch his shotgun.
She had allegedly approached the manager and asked to be allowed to hide in the restaurant
with her girls until someone came to help them, but later the manager gave two different
statements and told two different stories that made it unclear just what their conversations
had been.
She hadn't been offered the hiding place she'd wanted, and in late 2016 a judge found enough
reason to allow the lawsuit against Cracker Barrel to proceed.
Go back through Cracker Barrel's recent history, and you'll find a whole slew of sexual harassment
lawsuits.
In 2006, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a press release on the chain's
agreement to pay out $2 million to resolve a lawsuit brought by 51 former and current
employees who were subjected to not only harassment, but racial harassment that was
very similar to the working conditions outlined in the massive 2004 lawsuit.
The following year, Nation's Restaurant News reported that they were spending $270,000
to settle another lawsuit brought by five former female employees in New Mexico.
And, in 2009, the EEOC reported they were handing out another $255,000 to settle yet
another harassment lawsuit that not only claimed male employees created a hostile
work environment, but that Cracker Barrel's corporate refused to take the claims seriously.
That's not the end of the story, either.
In 2007, Cracker Barrel turned around and sued several of their insurance companies
when they refused to cover the first $2 million payout for the 2006 verdict.
According to Insurance Journal, the insurance providers claimed that the lawsuit wasn't
something that was covered under the policy, while Cracker Barrel claimed their carriers
consistently denied their insurance policy obligations by refusing to reimburse.
On February 27, 2017, Bradley Reid Byrd kicked off one of the biggest social media scandals
of the year when he posted a rant on his personal Facebook page, followed up by a direct question
on Cracker Barrel's Facebook page about a week later.
The topic?
Why did you fire my wife?
According to Eater, literally all of Cracker Barrel's social media accounts were deluged
with angry comments from customers who were taking up the cause of getting “hashtag-justice-for-brad’s-wife."
Even Instagram photos of delicious-looking pancakes were flooded with comments about
how Brad's wife wasn't going to be enjoying them any time soon, and it kept going on and
on.
Some even started a Change.org petition on the Byrds' behalf.
While Brad claimed his wife's termination came just days before she was due to receive
a vacation payout, Cracker Barrel continued to keep quiet over the whole thing.
Cracker Barrel fired long-time manager Belinda Jones in February 2016, after she had been
working for them for 21 years.
The reason they gave was that she had been handing out discounts to friends and family,
but Jones claimed that her liberal use of discounts was allowed within company policy,
and that corporate had even taken notes of how her sales were doing, pre- and post-discount.
The real reason for her termination, she claimed, was rooted in a conversation she had with
her district manager.
Jones claimed the manager asked her not only about her husband's health but of the costs
of his cancer treatments, and her responses kicked off an investigation into her discount
use.
Other managers who gave discounts in a similar way weren't fired, her lawsuit claimed, and
Jones's camp says it was just an excuse to fire her, get out from under the costly cancer
treatments, and replace her with a younger manager.
The case is ongoing.
Cracker Barrel has had a few lawsuits filed against them for their handling of current
and prospective employees with disabilities, too.
In 2013, the Dayton Daily News reported that they were being sued by Johnny Wills, who
was fired from his general manager job because he had been diagnosed with a rare liver disease.
Wills, who was named general manager of the year in 2007, was diagnosed in 2008.
The condition forced him to take more time off than expected, he ended up on a work improvement
plan for reasons Wills said were bogus, and he was told to hand in a resignation letter
in 2010.
Later, a jury found that his resignation was not forced, as he had claimed, and sided with
Cracker Barrel.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission stepped in on another case in 2018, when the
National Law Review says they took up the cause of a deaf man who had been denied employment
as a dishwasher because of his disability.
The applicant showed up for a scheduled interview, was told the manager who was supposed to do
the interview wasn't there, and other store managers refused to conduct an interview at
all because they weren't comfortable trying to communicate with him.
But that wasn't the only time Cracker Barrel got in trouble for its failure to properly
accommodate disabled people.
It's a business's responsibility to be accessible to all customers, and in 2014, Cracker Barrel
was sued because they had failed to do that.
Business Insider says it was Sarah Heinz of the U.S. Women's Wheelchair Basketball Team
who brought the lawsuit against Cracker Barrel.
It was based on a simple fact: when she tried to use the handicapped parking spaces at the
restaurant, she found they were so steep that her wheelchair just rolled away before she
could get into it.
Heinzl's suit was based in Pennsylvania, but the problem was much more widespread than
that.
The case cited 107 restaurants that weren't up to code and didn't adhere to the guidelines
put in place by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Cracker Barrel was given 30 months to fix those problems, and slightly longer than that
to fix any other problems found by surveys at other locations.
New locations would need to earn certificates of compliance to show there were no problems
at new restaurants, Heinzl was awarded $7,500, and Cracker Barrel was ordered to pay $830,000
in legal fees.
Food poisoning outbreaks are terrifying, and one repeatedly affected plenty of customers
in southwestern Michigan in 2017 and 2018.
According to MLive, 11 cases of salmonella were reported to the Kalamazoo County Health
and Community Services Department, and it was traced to Cracker Barrel.
Workers and health officials tried to track down the precise source of the strain, but
here's where things get extra terrifying: they couldn't find it.
The restaurant closed first for a complete kitchen remodel, then a few months later,
they closed to upgrade the dish room.
They got a clean bill of compliance, reopened and closed again when the salmonella reappeared.
Cracker Barrel notes that it's not a supply chain problem, and it's a type of salmonella
only found in southwest Michigan.
The county's health department called it a significant salmonella contamination, and
since they just couldn't get rid of it, they closed that location permanently.
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