Same! I miss M.G. (all of ours closed). I know it wasn’t fine dining, but our family got in a lot of great hangman games on that brown paper!
Our Bucca closed. I only went one or two times. The insane amount of food in a single serving put me off - I get the “family style” intent of the place but if you’re a party of two or a family with small kids it’s just a crazy amount of food.
Not a fan of Kendra Scott. My kids went through that phase too. I think the quality was much better when she started out but has plummeted since then.
Very much a niche market. Definitely helps to have deep, red state roots (which I do.) Not quite sure when they became a thing, but CB has been a regular vacation stop in my family for the past fifteen years or so.
Plenty of Cracker Barrel’s open in the Midwest. And busy! I have never been to a Bucee’s (or however it’s spelled) but I’m gonna say CB set the stage for that type of business. No gas at Cracker Barrel though!
Cracker Barrel was popular with my running group when we celebrated birthdays or holidays together. The one near me was very clean, reasonably priced with pleasant servers. They also didn’t mind a group of 8 to 12 sweaty women showing up for breakfast- and all of us wanting modifications! Ours is always busy.
Tesla superchargers are commonly placed near shopping centers and/ or other stores/restaurants. That is why we stopped into a CB in TN when charging the car. The last time I had been in one was probably 30 years ago when our kids were small. We placed our order and then sat and waited and waited and waited. We finally called over a server the told us that our server had just had a fight with a cook and quit!
@jym626 About Kendra Scott…I was not too aware of its popularity. Last year, I attended a big event where my daughter was the honoree / award winner. The honor was the thing, of course, and she got some sort of engraved thingy. But they also gave her a little gift bag and I was sitting with her at her table and as soon as she saw it was all a bunch of jewelry, she gave it to me, as she doesn’t wear any jewelry (except her wedding ring). I took it home and it was a bunch of Kendra Scott jewelry. For some reason, all the price tags were left on all the items which totaled $350 and I haven’t worn any of it. It does seem overpriced for what appears to be costume jewelry.
Stellantis seems to have some very low selling non-exotic brands in the US, like Fiat and Alfa Romeo. Even its Chrysler and Dodge brands are down to Mitsubishi levels of sales (but probably held up by fleets like the CHP buying Dodge Durangos).
I can’t watch tv for more than 5 minutes without a commercial for the Good Feet Store coming on…
The Cracker Barrel in our area is pretty busy, but it is close to two assisted living places and a large 55+ condo complex…and it’s right by the freeway exit and on-ramp
I think that was absolutely Cracker Barrel’s strategy- to be the haven for travelers so many locations (honestly that’s the only way I recall seeing them) right off a highway.
Which one? There have been many. Remember when they fired gay workers because they didn’t want employees “whose sexual preferences fail to demonstrate normal heterosexual values?”
Or when they segregated Black customers, if they even provided them service at all?
Those were long ago- I’m talking about the recent branding mishap.
They’ve long recovered from past issues. They’re not an issue that resonates with customers today.
Don’t forget, like Denny’s, the company’s may be the same but not necessarily management or board members etc. So they are not impacted by those issues.
We have 2 Kendra Scott stores in our area, and when I’ve seen them no one is in them. At my school’s scholarship fundraiser they always have a Kendra Scott gift card and some jewelry that people can bid on.
We used to have a Bucca, but it’s been closed a long time. We had another Italian restaurant (not a chain) near us that closed 2 months ago after being in business for about 40 years and it wasn’t very good, at least to me, because all their dishes had way too much cheese. It was like they were trying to make the dishes as cheesy, heavy, and calorific as possible. The portions were huge as well, like you could barely get through a quarter of the lasagna. The fact that everything was so full of cheese probably filled you up pretty quickly. And you couldn’t microwave the leftovers because the cheese would become all congealed. I remember we drove by the place once and there was an ambulance in the parking lot…maybe a heart attack from the cheese?
I’m surprised the closest Starbucks to our house is still open. It has very inconsistent hours, it’s not unusual to find it closed at the normal times, and they often are drive-through only. I’m not a huge Starbucks person, but I tend to go to another Starbucks which is less than half a mile down the road, and has normal hours. Maybe they can’t get enough workers?
There were 2 Starbucks very close to where my D works and they closed one. Probably because they were very close to each other, but one was in a slightly less obvious and accessible location, and they couldn’t really expand it, so they closed that one.
Last August, IIRC Cracker Barrel went to a very simplified version of their logo, and it wasn’t well accepted at all. The guy leaning against the barrel “Uncle Hershel” was quite popular, apparently:
