Cracker Barrel Old Country Store

Area Served

About Cracker Barrel Old Country Store

Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. is an American chain of combined restaurant and gift stores with a Southern country theme. The company was founded by Dan Evins in 1969; its first store was in Lebanon, Tennessee. The corporate offices are located at a different facility in the same city. The chain's stores were at first positioned near Interstate highway exits in the Southeastern and Midwestern United States, but has expanded across the country during the 1990s and 2000s. As of September 18, 2012, the chain operates 639 stores in 43 states. As a Southern-themed chain, Cracker Barrel serves traditional Southern comfort food often described as down-home country cooking and sells gift items including simple toys representative of the 1950s and 1960s, toy vehicles, puzzles, and woodcrafts. Also sold are country music CDs, DVDs of early classic television, cookbooks, baking mixes, kitchen novelty decor, and early classic brands of candy and snack foods. Breakfast is served all day, and there are two menus: one for breakfast, the other for lunch and dinner. Since the first restaurant opened, the menu has featured Southern specialties, including biscuits, fried chicken, and catfish; seasonal and regional menu items were added during the 1980s and 1990s. The locations are themed around the idea of a traditional Southern U.S. general store. Items used to decorate each store are authentic artifacts, including everyday objects from the early 1900s and after. Each restaurant features a front porch lined with wooden rocking chairs, a wooden peg solitaire game on every table, and a stone fireplace with a deer head displayed above the mantel. In fact, each location has five common items: a shotgun, a cook stove, a deer head, a telephone, and a traffic light. The peg games have been present in Cracker Barrel since the opening of the first store, and continue to be produced by the same family in Lebanon, Tennessee.