Dive Brief:
- Cracker Barrel’s investments in its restaurants, team and operations helped drive rising guest metrics for the third consecutive quarter, including a 4% year-over-year boost to its Google star rating, President and CEO Julie Felss Masino said on a Q3 2026 earnings call Tuesday.
- Loyalty was a bright spot for the company. Cracker Barrel Rewards has grown to 12 million members, according to Masino. Loyalty member visits increased year over year, and tracked member sales were above 40%.
- “We are encouraged by our progress and are confident that our continued focus on serving delicious food and delivering an exceptional guest experience will sustain this momentum,” Masino said on the call.
Dive Insight:
Cracker Barrel has been improving the customer experience across its business, from people to technology, as it works to recover from a botched rebrand attempt last year. But the company still has a journey ahead.
While Cracker Barrel stopped modernizing its restaurants’ visuals, it’s still making smaller changes, according to SVP and CFO Craig Pommells. For example, the company has been updating its bathrooms and adjusting how it displays items in its retail area.
“What we're spending in the store is not a traditional remodel, but really makes the experience easier for the guest, a little bit more effective, but really preserves the brand's core,” Pommells said.
The restaurant is seeing improvements to hourly worker retention, including a 6% improvement in managerial turnover, according to Masino. “We are pleased with the favorable trends in these metrics, which are important leading indicators and are confident these gains will translate into improved traffic over time.”
Cracker Barrel is investing in upskilling employees and leveraging AI to make their work more efficient, according to Masino. AI applications include better labor forecasting and helping automated customer service resolve tickets or escalate to live support more quickly.
The company also developed an AI agent that can dig through customer feedback to provide actionable insights, according to Masino.
The improvements helped Cracker Barrel slow its sales decline compared to the previous quarter, but they weren’t enough to restore growth.
Comparable restaurant sales fell 2.6% year over year and comparable retail stores fell 1.8% year over year in the third quarter of 2026, according to an earnings report. Total revenue fell 2.9% to $797.4 million.
In the coming weeks, Cracker Barrel will upgrade its website to reduce friction and make navigation more intuitive, according to Masino. The updated platform will include better support for online ordering, rewards and targeted content.
“Importantly, this also serves as the foundation for expanding personalization across more channels over time, allowing us to deliver more effective messaging and reasons to visit wherever guests are engaging with Cracker Barrel,” Masino said.
