Cracker Barrel's New Dining Rule Is Encouraging Employees to Eat There

2025 was one of the more unusual years in the history of the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain. The company faced right-wing backlash after they announced that they would be changing their logo and possibly updating their locations, so much so that they ditched both of those efforts.

Now, the company is making headlines after a leaked memo suggested that they were implementing a pretty strict new dining policy. Here's what we know about the policy.

Cracker Barrel's new dining rule is not for regular customers, but is instead focused on employees who have to travel for work. According to a leaked memo that was first reported on by The Wall Street Journal, Cracker Barrel is telling employees that they have to eat at the company's own restaurants when traveling, even as they try to rein in travel costs more generally.

By forcing employees to eat at Cracker Barrel locations, they are essentially giving their employees free meals instead of reimbursing them for going to other restaurants. This comes as Cracker Barrel is trying to tighten its budgets across the board following declining sales in 2025. Newsweek has also reported that alcohol will no longer be reimbursed as a travel-related expense.

This policy is likely to be celebrated by some Conservatives who fomented backlash against the chain last year, but it's also a signal of broader economic pressures affecting a wide variety of businesses. When money gets tight, business-related travel is usually the first thing to get cut, although it's often not the only thing that winds up happening. Regardless, though, this news will not affect Cracker Barrel customers, at least not directly.

This is just the latest in a string of tough headlines for Cracker Barrel. The chain, which has long had a rustic dining culture and served mostly American staples, has been trying to make its public-facing image more progressive for years. That came to a head when the company announced that they would be removing the man with the barrel from their logo, and for whatever reason, people got really upset.

Cracker Barrel ultimately backed off on that move, but the announcement was enough to turn some people off of the chain, at least for a minute. Whether "going woke" is the reason employees now have to eat at restaurant locations when traveling, it's certainly going to dominate the public conversation around this news. Of course, employees who work at Cracker Barrel should hopefully not mind eating the food, so hopefully it's not a great loss.

Cracker Barrel may be struggling, but it's unclear whether these struggles will last, and what they might mean for the company's future more generally. All we know right now is that employees are being encouraged to eat at Cracker Barrels, which is something the company has likely always wanted them to do.