Honestly, taking over an American icon is a thankless job. You’ve got decades of tradition on one side and the cold, hard reality of declining foot traffic on the other. This is the tightrope CEO Julie Felss Masino has been walking since she stepped into the lead role at Cracker Barrel Old Country Store in late 2023.
It hasn’t been all biscuits and gravy.
When Masino moved from the neon-lit, "Live Mas" world of Taco Bell to the rocking chairs of Lebanon, Tennessee, investors were hopeful. She was the "innovation" hire. But by late 2025, the narrative shifted from a quick facelift to a grueling, brick-by-brick reconstruction.
The Taco Bell Playbook Meets the Porch
Masino isn’t a stranger to massive scale. Before the 2023 appointment, she spent years as President of Taco Bell International and North America. She was the one behind the "Bell Hotel" and those Nacho Fries that everyone obsessed over. She also put in a solid twelve years at Starbucks. Basically, she knows how to make a legacy brand feel "cool" again.
But Cracker Barrel is a different beast.
At Taco Bell, you can change the menu every six weeks and people cheer. At Cracker Barrel? If you move a single cast-iron skillet from the wall, people notice. Masino’s challenge was basically to fix a plane while it was flying—specifically a plane with 660 locations and a very loyal, very vocal fan base.
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What went wrong with the "New Look"?
The summer of 2025 was... rough. Masino greenlit a brand refresh that included a modernized logo and lightened-up restaurant interiors. The goal was to attract younger diners. The result was a PR firestorm. Social media went into a frenzy, with some regular guests accusing the brand of losing its soul. Even high-profile political figures weighed in.
It got so intense that by October 2025, the company officially ended its partnership with Prophet, the consultancy behind the refresh. They even walked back some of the more aggressive remodeling plans, like removing the signature fireplaces.
Masino was surprisingly candid about it. She admitted that the effort to "simplify" things ended up making execution harder for the staff and muddled the consistency of the food.
The Five-Pillar Strategy That Actually Matters
Forget the logo for a second. The real work CEO Julie Felss Masino is doing happens in the kitchen and on the balance sheet. She’s implementing a $700 million, three-year transformation plan.
- Menu Optimization: They’ve been testing things like Hashbrown Casserole Shepherd’s Pie to win the dinner crowd.
- Pricing Calibration: Cracker Barrel has historically been cheap. Almost too cheap. Masino is trying to find the sweet spot where they can raise prices slightly without losing the "value" title.
- Digital Growth: The loyalty program, Cracker Barrel Rewards, hit 10 million members in late 2025. That’s a huge win. Those members now account for about 40% of tracked sales.
- Operational Excellence: This is the boring stuff that makes or breaks a restaurant. Think better kitchen tech and more consistent training.
- Employee Experience: You can't have "country hospitality" if your servers are miserable. Masino has been cutting management layers to get closer to the front-line staff.
The Numbers Nobody Talks About
Let’s look at the actual performance. In the first quarter of fiscal 2026, traffic was down about 9% for the bulk of the quarter. That sounds scary. And it is. Adjusted EBITDA plummeted from over $45 million to just $7.2 million year-over-year.
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But there’s a silver lining.
Google star ratings for the stores—which Masino watches like a hawk because they correlate with future traffic—hit their highest levels since 2020. Customer scores for "food taste" and "service" actually improved by 3% to 4% in late 2025.
It’s a classic "lagging vs. leading" indicator situation. The vibes in the stores are getting better, but it hasn't shown up in the cash register yet.
Why the turnaround is slow
Masino has been open about the "choppy macro environment." People are squeezed. If you’re making under $60,000 a year, a trip to Cracker Barrel is a luxury. When inflation hits the grocery store, the "Old Country Store" feels the pinch immediately.
Also, they made a mistake in early 2025 by trying to simplify the back-of-house processes too much. It backfired. They had to spend the end of 2025 "retraining everyone" on the core recipes. You can’t rush a biscuits-from-scratch culture.
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What People Get Wrong About Her Leadership
There’s a segment of the internet that thinks Masino is trying to "destroy" Cracker Barrel. Honestly? That's just wrong. If you look at her history at Sprinkles Cupcakes or Godiva, she’s a brand builder, not a liquidator.
She isn't getting rid of the rocking chairs. She isn't stopping the peg game.
What she is doing is trying to make sure the company is still alive in 2035. You can’t survive on nostalgia alone when your core demographic is aging and your buildings need new roofs.
Actionable Insights for Investors and Fans
If you’re watching the Masino era, here is what you should actually be looking at over the next six months:
- Traffic Trends: Ignore the revenue for a second; watch the guest counts. If the 9% decline doesn't narrow by mid-2026, the strategy is in trouble.
- Loyalty Engagement: Watch how they use that 10-million-member database. If they can't turn "Rewards" into "Return Visits," the tech investment was a waste.
- Menu Simplification: Look for "Daily Specials" that stick. The $8.99 early-dine special is the current test of her value proposition.
- Remodel Pace: They’ve slowed down the "re-designs" to focus on "refreshes" (paint and lights). This is a smart move to save capital while they stabilize.
The Masino era is a case study in how hard it is to modernize a brand that is literally built on the concept of the "good old days." It’s messy, it’s expensive, and it’s going to take a lot longer than the three-year plan originally suggested.
Keep a close eye on those Q2 and Q3 2026 earnings. That’s when we’ll see if the "one guest at a time" focus actually puts people back in those rocking chairs.