Cracker Barrel made their new logo too abstract and then they dropped it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The old logo for the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain has founder Dave Evin’s Uncle Herschel nostalgically sitting in a wooden chair next to a barrel, as is shown above on the wall of their Boise location.

 

A press release on August 19, 2025 at PR Newswire titled Cracker Barrel Teams up with Country Music Star Jordan Davis to Invite Guests to Discover “All the More” this Fall described the abstract new logo:

 

“Its more popular menu offerings like farm fresh scrambled eggs and buttermilk biscuits even serve as inspiration behind the hues of a refreshed color palette featured in the new campaign. Anchored in Cracker Barrel's signature gold and brown tones, the updated visuals will appear across menus and marketing collateral, including the fifth evolution of the brand's logo, which is now rooted even more closely to the iconic barrel shape and word mark that started it all.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That new logo with the sideways barrel and minus hoops (shown above) was so abstract that the Wikimedia Commons web page said:

 

“This logo image consists only of simple geometric shapes or text. It does not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and is therefore in the public domain.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I squeezed it, squared off the bottom and top, and added a pair of hoops to produce the more recognizable version shown above.

 

The new logo got a lot of negative feedback, and it quickly was dumped. For example, an article by Lorraine Taylor at Fox News on August 22, 2025 is titled Cracker Barrel faces customer criticism after ditching iconic 48-year-old logo for new design. A second article by Ali Abbas Ahmadi at BBC News on August 26, 2025 is titled US restaurant chain Cracker Barrel scraps new logo after backlash. A third article by Megan Cerullo at CBS News Moneywatch on August 27, 2025 is titled Cracker Barrel refreshed its logo and paid the price. Here’s what brand experts say went wrong. Experts said they went generic and severed the logo from its roots. A fourth article by Sarah Fortinsky at The Hill on August 27, 2025 is titled White House claims credit after Cracker Barrel reverts logo.

 

 

How to construct and deliver an elevator pitch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An elevator pitch is a brief marketing speech that provides a synopsis of who you are and what you do. There is an excellent specialized article by Leslie A. Caromile et al. at the BMC Proceedings on November 26, 2024 titled How to construct and deliver an elevator pitch: a formula for the research scientist. It has links to the following six figures:

 

Purpose of elevator speech [Figure 1]

Analyze your audience [Figure 2]

Context of elevator speech [Figure 3]

Developing a scientific elevator speech [Figure 4]

Major components [Figure 5]

Example [Figure 6]

 

A blog post at Northeastern University Online MBA on September 9, 2024 is titled 7 Essential Tips for Crafting a Winning Elevator Pitch. They are:

 

Identify your goal

Understand your audience

Keep it concise and clear

Tell a story

End strong

Practice and refine

Be confident

 

There also is another post at the UMass Amherst Iconnect blog on September 20, 2024 titled How to Give a Great Elevator Speech (With Examples) which has the following sections:

 

How to Write an Elevator Pitch

Who are you?

What do do?

What’s unique about you?

Call to action (or What’s your ask?)

Something memorable

 

Finally, there is an undated three-page pdf article from the Princeton University Center for Career Development titled What is an elevator pitch and why do I need one?

 

The elevator door image was adapted from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

A Kringle is much tastier than a Pringle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Kringle is much tastier than a Pringle. Their packages are shown above, along with a six-inch yellow ruler.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Kringle is an iced Danish pastry ring made in Racine, Wisconsin. There is a brief description at Roadfood and a Wikipedia article. I frequently buy mine for $10 at Trader Joe’s and have a slice for breakfast with coffee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pringles are stackable, saddle-shaped (hyperbolic paraboloid) potato-based chips originally invented by Procter & Gamble in 1968. They are more notable for compact packaging than taste, and marketed in twenty flavors. Ingredients for Original ones are: dried potatoes, vegetable oil, degerminated yellow corn flour, cornstarch, rice flour, maltodextrin, mono and diglycerides, salt, and wheat starch. Conventional potato chips usually are tastier than Pringles.

 

Crisp battered green beans and other fried vegetable side dishes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Grocery Outlet I recently bought and enjoyed eating a box of frozen P.F. Chang’s Crispy Green Beans, which (as shown above) are covered with a tempura batter. At BadBatchBaking there is an article titled Crispy Green Beans PF Chang’s Copycat Recipe. Birds Eye also sells frozen Crispy Green Beans. According to Wikipedia, these veggies originated in Portugal as Peixinhos da horta before becoming Tempura in Japan. They are an interesting tasty alternative to French fries.

  

I was surprised to find that green beans don’t appear in menus as most fast-food restaurants (and neither do carrots, though they are common in Tempura). Why don’t they market this veggie? Both Burger King and Jack in the Box have Onion Rings and Mozzarella Sticks. Carl’s Jr. has Onion Rings and Fried Zucchini. The fast-casual chain Smash Burger just has Onion Rings and Crispy Brussels Sprouts. But the Habit Burger Grill chain has Tempura Green Beans.  

 

Another article at USA Today on July 28, 2023 titled Crazy Good: 10 fast food sides that will blow your mind has the following list:

 

Fried Okra – Golden Chick

Wisconsin Cheese Curds – Culver’s

Chili – Wendy’s

Mac and Cheese – Chick-fil-A

Tots – Sonic Drive-In

Onion Rings – Jack in the Box

Fried Pickles – Zaxby’s

Mozzarella Sticks – Arby’s

Tempura Green Beans – The Habit Burger Grill

Cajun Fried Corn - Wingstop

 

Fried Pickles have another story which I’ll talk about later.

 

Forget about memory supplements!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Mcgill Office for Science and Society there is an excellent article (by their head) Joe Schwarcz on February 16, 2024 titled Nothing Memorable About Memory Supplements. He stated:

 

“What then is the overall conclusion about slowing memory decline? There is not enough evidence to back any memory supplement."

 

On January 13, 2020 I had a blog post titled Did a clinical trial show the dietary supplement pill Prevagen improves memory? Only when you forget about more than half of their data.

 

The finger with a string was adapted from an image at Openclipart.

 

Would you buy a dress from a barn or a pita from a pit?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Names for things like brands, and titles for speeches matter. On August 6, 2023 I blogged about Brand names and changes. In that post I discussed a local restaurant which had changed its name from Bad Boy Burger to Cowboy Burger.

 

At the Boise Public Library I found a 2011 book by Christopher Johnson titled MICROSTYLE The Art of Writing Little. Mr. Johnson has a PhD in linguistics and is a verbal branding consultant. On page 99 he discusses the women’s clothing stores known as Dressbarn:

 

“So what’s a bad metaphor? One that either leads to undesirable inferences, or fails to illuminate the target. Undesirable inferences emanate from the retail outlet name The Dress Barn. This name treats a store, metaphorically, as a place that houses animals. Questions immediately arise: Are the animals the dresses or the customers? Certainly no dress shopper wants to be described as a cow, horse, goat, or pig. Nor does one want to be wearing a barn animal, or a dress as big as a barn. Barns are about as far from the urbane world of fashion as a place can get, and they stink. The name The Dress Barn is a metaphorical travesty.”

 

The Wikipedia article about Dressbarn says all 650 of their stores closed on December 26, 2019.

 

At the bottom of page 99 Mr. Johnson discusses how:

 

“Another bad metaphor name is The Pin Cushion, for an acupuncture clinic in Seattle. We stick pins into pincushions carelessly. Pins don’t even have to be very sharp to go into a pincushion. What the names in this case were going for, presumably, was an image of relaxation: the logo shows a human figure lying back on a pillow, Instead they created an image of carelessness.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pita Pit is a franchise sandwich chain that I don’t patronize. As shown above, I would not buy a pita from a pit. A humorous YouTube video clip from John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight discussed finding a sandwich in a hole. And last year John did a whole 27-minute show on another sandwich franchise chain named after something underground – Subway.

 

The cartoon of a barn came from Openclipart; the painting of a pit was edited from this altarpiece image at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Beware of stealth fruit juices

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a product is called may differ significantly from what it actually contains. A few days ago I bought a bottle of OceanSpray REVItALIZE Cranberry Apple flavored juice drink with 3 juices (as shown above). What is the third one? The list of ingredients on the bottle (and on the Albertsons web site) says it contains:

 

Filtered Water, Grape Juice (Water, Grape Juice Concentrate), Cranberry Juice (Water, Cranberry Juice Concentrate), Pineapple Juice (Water, Pineapple Juice Concentrate), Natural Flavor, Magnesium Gluconate (Magnesium), Vegetable Concentrate for Color, Gum Arabic, Ester Gum.

 

The second (and stealth) ingredient is grape juice, but there’s more of it than either cranberry or pineapple!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also have a can of AriZona brand ALL NATURAL Kiwi Strawberry Fruit Juice Cocktail (as shown above). The ingredients listed on that can are:

 

Filtered Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup (Glucose-Fructose Syrup), Pear Juice from Concentrate, Kiwi Juice from Concentrate, Citric Acid, Natural Flavors, Strawberry Juice from Concentrate, Fruit and Vegetable Juice for Color, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Gum Acacia, Ester Gum, Beta Carotene for Color.

 

Here the third (and stealth) ingredient is pear juice, but there’s more of it than either kiwi or strawberry!

 

Back on November 5, 2010 I blogged about Do you like stealth raisins? In that post I discussed how my wife dislikes oatmeal cookies containing raisins, but found those just labeled oatmeal cookies had stealth raisin paste.

 

Brand names and changes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I drive west on Fairview Ave to the WinCo supermarket where I grocery shop, I pass what used to be known as Bad Boy Burgers. But an article by Autumn Robertson at Boise Dev on July 27, 2023 titled ‘Always wanted to be a cowboy’: From Bad Boy to Cowboy, Fairview burger joint changes names described how that restaurant (which used to be one of three Bad Boy Burger locations) changed - since the ownership previously had changed.

 

Anyway, Bad Boy struck me as a curious choice for a name. It’s not as awful as the mythical Bad Guy Burgers (shown above) – which could be a cue they were ‘horsing around’ with the meat.  That had happened a decade ago in Europe as described in another article by Felicity Lawrence at  The Guardian on February 15, 2023 titled Horsemeat scandal: the essential guide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was growing up in Pittsburgh, the local franchise holder for the Big Boy hamburger was called Eat’n Park. That struck me as not being in chronological order, so they could have been called Park’n Eat (as shown above). I remember that when we drove to Wheeling the franchise holder for West Virginia instead was Elby’s (for the Elias brothers). In other places it was Shoney’s or Frisch’s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On April 6, 2022 I blogged about how It is easy to parody a brand name or logo. I mentioned Yellow [Freight] whose logo already was a parody because it was colored orange rather than actually being yellow. Now they instead are bankrupt. An article by Elizabeth Napolitano at CBS News on July 31, 2023 is titled Yellow is shutting down after 99 years. Here’s what happened.

 

An image of the Big Boy statue came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Jack of three trades, and master of one

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On South Cole Road in Boise there is a restaurant called O Crab Cajun Seafood and Bar. As their Cajun name suggests, and the menu shows, they are masters of seafood boils and fried seafood (baskets and po’ boy sandwiches). But their menu also has a couple of Italian pasta dishes listed: seafood marinara and Cajun shrimp alfredo. 

 

I have been getting tabloid mailings with their monthly menus which have added other genres. One had Japanese (special sushi rolls or ramen). Another had Hawaiian (poke bowls). So far there are four genres, as shown above by a Venn diagram.

 

Perhaps next month they will go Mexican - with seafood tacos and burritos, or Greek - with gyros, or Indian with curries.  

 

Yesterday I drove by Capital Auto Body at 5373 Emerald Street in Boise. Their sign says “All Foreign & Domestic.” Long ago the Car Talk radio show on NPR had joked about repair shops saying that we specialize in all makes, foreign and domestic.

 

The location for O Crab used to be a McGrath’s Fish House, which closed in 2020. McGrath’s once had 21 restaurants, but now just has two in Salem, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington.

 

The joy of segmenting markets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My wife prefers chewable multivitamin gummies, as shown above. (Since she has arthritis, I removed the outer layer from the child-proof cap).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I went to get another bottle at Albertsons, I noticed there were four demographic kinds of market segmentation.  As shown above, they are both by gender (Women or Men) and age (Everyone or Mature). Are those that all the possible market segments?

 

No, because gummies contain animal-based gelatin. There also could be another version without pork-based gelatin – for Jews and Muslims who keep Kosher or Halal. Still another version could be for vegans, with agar rather than gelatin.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Foods can have lots of market segments. For example, there originally just were Ritz Crackers, as shown above. But there currently are eight Original flavors, and another seven Crisps & Thins:

 

Ritz Crackers – Original   8 flavors

 

Everything - 13.7 oz

Garlic Butter - 13.7 oz

Honey Wheat - 13.7 oz

Hint of Salt - 13.7 oz

Original – 10.3 oz, 13.7 oz, 20.5 oz

Reduced Fat – 12.5 oz

Roasted Vegetable – 13.3 oz

Whole Wheat - 12.9 oz or 20.5 oz (1.28 lb)

 

Ritz Crisp & Thins   7 flavors

 

Barbecue – 7.1 oz

Cheddar – 7.1 oz

Cream Cheese & Onion – 7.1 oz or 10 oz

Jalapeno Cheddar – 7.1 oz

Original – 7.1 oz or 10 oz

Salt & Vinegar – 7.1 oz

Tabasco – 7.1 oz

 

And Cheerios cereals amazingly come in eighteen different flavors:

 

Apple Cinnamon

Blueberry

Chocolate

Chocolate Peanut Butter

Cinnamon

Frosted

Honey Nut

Honey Nut Medley Crunch

Honey Vanilla

Multigrain

Oat Crunch Almond

Oat Crunch Berry

Oat Crunch Cinnamon

Oat Crunch Oats ‘N Honey

Original

Pumpkin Spice

Strawberry Banana

Very Berry

 

The 1939 Ritz Crackers ad came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Deceptive web designs (also known as dark patterns)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes the jargon phrase applied to a concept is not obvious. The Wikipedia page for Dark Pattern says:

 

“A dark pattern (also known as a ‘deceptive design pattern’) is a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills. User experience designer Harry Brignull coined the neologism on July 28, 2010 with the registration of darkpatterns dot org, a ‘pattern library with the specific goal of naming and shaming deceptive user interfaces.’ “

 

Mr. Brignull later renamed his web site Deceptive Design.

 

There is a detailed discussion of this nasty marketing topic in an article by Arvind Narayanan et al on pages 42 to 47 of the September 2020 issue of the Communications of the ACM titled Dark patterns: past, present and future. There is another description in an article by Sara Morrison at Vox on April 1, 2021 titled Dark patterns, the tricks websites use to make you say yes, explained. And on September 15, 2022 the U. S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a press release titled FTC Report Shows Rise in Sophisticated Dark Patterns Designed to Trick and Trap Consumers, and a link to their 48-page staff report titled Bringing Dark Patterns to Light.

 

You also can find a pair of excellent brief articles by Kelly Leblanc at Information Today. One on November 16, 2021 is titled The Magic of Dark Patterns: Can We Evade Their Trickery? Another with a summary on December 1, 2022 is titled Dark Patterns Deep Dive. The latter article actually comes from a series of four others which unfortunately are not out on the web. I found them at EBSCOhost. Those article titles and dates are:

 

Dark Patterns Deep Dive: The Roach Motel - April 2022

 

Dark Patterns Deep Dive: Misdirection and Forced Continuity – July/August 2022

 

Dark Patterns Deep Dive: Confirshaming – October 2022

 

Dark Patterns Deep Dive: Bait and Switch – November 2022

 

Dark Patterns Deep Dive: with a section on Bait and Switch and Disguised Ads – December 2022

 

My graphic is modified from this cartoon at Wikimedia Commons and a devil at Openclipart.

 

Does the average American use 130 rolls of toilet paper a year? Is 15% of global deforestation due to toilet paper?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some statistics we read are merely crap. An article in the Spring 2015 World Wildlife Magazine titled Price of Toilet Paper for the Planet claims:

 

“30 POUNDS: Average amount of toilet paper used by Americans per capita in a year. That’s roughly 130 rolls. The U.S. is the world’s biggest buyer of toilet paper.”

 

But my rolls of Scott 1000s shown above each weigh 0.413 pounds, so 30 pounds would correspond to just 73 rolls. Right on the package it says a roll lasts a week, so I’d more likely use 52 rolls per year rather than 130.

 

An old article by Joan Reinhardt Reiss in E: The Environmental Magazine on May 15, 2009 titled The Toilet Paper Problem stated that:

 

“According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), deforestation is the single greatest cause of global warming, and toilet tissue is responsible for 15% of all deforestation.”

 

Similar 15% claims have been stated since then. For example, an article by Kaitlyn Wylde at Futurism on November 9, 2017 is titled 15% of deforestation is due to toilet paper alone. Here’s how we can fix this.

 

The BBC Radio 4 program More or Less: Behind the Statistics for January 21, 2023 was titled Does toilet paper cause 15% of global deforestation? They described how:

 

“A British company has claimed that the production and use of toilet paper is responsible for 15% of deforestation globally. We investigate the claim and ask what the true environmental cost of toilet paper is. Charlotte McDonald talks to climate change scientist Professor Mary Gagen, chief adviser on forests to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the WWF.”

 

That company, Sirius, directed them to a 2019 report from the Natural Resources Defense Council – which does not contain that 15%. Presumably it was one titled The Issue with Tissue, which can be downloaded as a 31-page .pdf file. (There also is a June 2020 follow-up report titled The Issue with Tissue 2.0: How the tree-to-toilet pipeline affects our climate crisis, which doesn’t have that number either. The latest from NRDC is in an article by Jennifer Skene and Shelley Vinyard on September 13, 2022 also titled The Issue with Tissue).

 

Ms. Gagen suggested that the 15% likely was instead from a 10 to 14% for the entire pulp and paper industry. When the BBC contacted Sirius they said they were going to revise their radio ads to use another statistic they could back up for marketing.

 

Getting my attention with a giant envelope

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the mail this morning, as shown above, there was a huge envelope from Fisher Investments. Inside there just was a two-page marketing letter on oversize (9-1/4” by 12-1/4”) paper rather than the standard 8-1/2” by 11.” It offered me a free guide with 99 Retirement Tips.

 

Their marketing ploy using unusual stationery succeeded in briefly getting my attention. Similarly, opening a speech by stating a Startling Statistic can wake up your audience.

 

I just shred most envelopes with personalized offers for life insurance without opening them. The only exception is AAA Life Insurance, which includes a useful page of self-adhesive return address labels.  

 

 

Why does the new logo for our water company look like the backside of an animal?

 

 

 

 

 

In the mail we just received a notice that (following a merger) our water supplier here in Boise was changing its name from SUEZ to Veolia, with the curious red abstract logo shown above. Wikimedia Commons notes the image in that logo doesn’t meet the threshold of originality for a copyright. Wikipedia says Veolia began long ago in France as the Compagnie Générale des Eaux (CGE). The new name looks to me like a small child’s misspelling and mispronunciation of that for a stringed instrument (a viola).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For a water company, I’d have instead expected the logo image shown above - blue rather than red, and flipped with an upright teardrop rather than an inverted one.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On April 6, 2022 I blogged about how It is easy to parody a brand name or logo. The red Veolia logo looks to me like the backside of an animal – perhaps an otter as shown above.  

 

The image of an otter was adapted from this drawing by Pearson Scott Foresman at Wikimedia Commons.

 

It is easy is to parody a brand name or logo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You don’t get to choose your nickname, and might not like what you get called. Every month I get at a letter or postcard advertising Sparklight - the fiber-optic internet provider which before summer 2019 had called themselves CableOne. As shown above, their logo is just a purple slash. But I always refer to them by a parody of that name, Fart light. Why? Twenty years ago (back in 1999) there was an animated comedy film titled South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. Inside that film there is another titled Asses of Fire, in which the characters Terrance and Phillip try to light their farts on fire. My logo is a torch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Similarly, the satellite TV provider Dish Network has a logo where the letter I is made from a red circle and three successively larger crescents. As shown above, my parody of their logo is Pish (Scotch slang for urine) instead of Dish and shows a stream presumably going down the toilet.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What used to be called Yellow Freight has a logo that already is a parody. Their rounded orange trapezoid clearly is not really Yellow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One awful choice for a new logo was for a UK agency whose acronym is OGC, the Office of Government Commerce. On September 22, 2021 Joseph Foley discussed it in an an article at the Creative Bloq titled 14 design fails that were so bad they were actually good. As shown above, when you rotate the logo ninety degrees to the right the horizontal line for the G is very rude. It looks like a man with his fly unzipped whose penis is pointing upward.