Down the Cracker Barrel Rabbit Hole

Some Cracker Barrel brand “truffle cheddar” came through the food bank and I mistakenly brought a few cases back to the shop before tasting it and deeming it inedible and later throwing it out. Nobody is going to eat this - a reason why a lot of supermarket food ends up being donated to charity. This had a rubbery texture (aren’t good cheddars supposed to be crumbly?) and a repulsive, pungent stale mushroom and chemical taste.

This got me thinking about Cracker Barrel cheese - which was considered a premium brand decades ago - a step up from the normal, cheaper mass produced stuff. It’s owned by Lactalis now - the French conglomerate and the largest dairy products company on Earth. Lactalis bought the brand from Kraft Heinz as part of a multi-billion dollar transaction. These giant corporations love to push out new products that nobody asked for that expand — or some would say, dilute — their brands.

There is a chain of awful restaurants using the same name. In Australia there is a different Cracker Barrel brand of cheese made by the century old Warrnambool company.

The concept of a cracker barrel comes from when the British Royal Navy would pack hardtack into barrels. The restaurant chain claims that rural white people that resemble their customer base used to sit around the ol’ cracker barrel to socialize. If Applebee’s didn’t exist Cracker Barrel would definitely be the worst fast casual restaurant chain in America.

—Alex