Most restaurant chains come with at least
a few scandals, but Cracker Barrel has had
an almost shocking number of scandals, lawsuits,
and accusations leveled at them, especially
considering they're a relatively new chain
— in the grand scheme of things, at least.
Here are some huge scandals that may haunt
Cracker Barrel for quite a while to come.
In 2004, Cracker Barrel was embroiled in several
scandals, including a lawsuit brought by the
NAACP and an investigation by the Justice
Department.
The actions were instigated by claims that
black customers in several states were subjected
to not only the restaurant's segregation policies,
but other shockingly terrible types of treatment.
The list of accusations was long, and included:
segregated seating, seating and serving black
customers after white customers, subjecting
customers to racial slurs, and, shockingly,
serving black customers food that had been
fished out of the garbage.
Servers were also allegedly allowed to refuse
service to customers, based solely on their
skin color.
The Justice Department investigation came
first, and Cracker Barrel wasn't fined for
their findings.
Instead, they agreed to put anti-discrimination
measures and training programs in place, along
with hiring outside auditors and undercover
diners to monitor their progress.
In spite of the 2004 investigations and settlements,
Cracker Barrel has had continued problems
with accusations of racism as recently as
2018.
Cracker Barrel was hiring in 1991, but thanks
to a newly implemented HR policy, they were
only hiring people who weren't gay.
The policy didn't just forbid hiring gay employees,
but they also fired at least nine current
employees because of their sexual orientation.
Think it can't get worse?
The New York Times interviewed one employee
that had been fired under the policy, Cheryl
Summerville.
She had been working at Cracker Barrel for
three years, and said:
"They said they didn't really want to fire
me, because the policy was really aimed at
effeminate men and women who have masculine
traits who might be working as waiters or
waitresses.
But I said I couldn't just let them fire other
people and keep me, because it would just
be a matter of time before the policy caught
up with me, too."
Cracker Barrel's response was bizarre: They
finally rescinded the policy, but didn't really
accept any fault.
Instead they called it a, quote, "well-intentioned
over-reaction to the perceived values of our
customers and their comfort levels with these
individuals."
It wasn't until 2002 that Cracker Barrel added
sexual orientation to their non-discrimination
policy, after scoring a dismal "zero" on the
Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality
Index.
“I award you no points and may God have
mercy on your soul.”
In 2013, Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson went
on record with some seriously controversial
anti-gay comments that led to his suspension
from the show.
What does that have to do with Cracker Barrel?
The company weighed in on the side of everyone
who was offended by the remarks and Robertson's
anti-gay rhetoric.
Briefly.
According to Forbes, their first move was
to announce that while they were going to
continue to carry some Duck Dynasty-related
merchandise, they were removing products that
might offend guests.
Essentially, they pulled the A&E-produced
Duck Dynasty products, but kept selling the
more independently produced Duck Commander
products, including books like Miss Kay's
Duck Commander Kitchen Cookbook and the Duck
Commander Devotional book.
Cracker Barrel was the first retailer to make
the move, but it took just about 24 hours
for them to backpedal, hard.
They issued an official statement that read,
in part, "Our intent was to avoid offending,
but that's just what we've done.
You told us we made a mistake.
And, you weren't shy about it.
… You flat out told us we were wrong.
We listened."
All Duck Dynasty products were returned to
shelves.
There's a bit of a long story behind the lawsuit
Cracker Barrel was served with in 2018, and
the newspaper The Tennessean says it started
back in the 1970s.
That's when Earl "Peanutt" Montgomery was
busy co-writing songs with country music legend
George Jones, and it's also when Jones pitched
him an idea.
The plan was to have Montgomery produce an
album that would be something of a gift.
Proceeds from the album would essentially
be Montgomery's retirement package.
That was the plan, at least.
The album was recorded, but when Jones started
to get shuffled from recording studio to recording
studio, it was never released.
Fast forward to 2017, when Jones' widow, Nancy,
sold all his intellectual property to Concord.
Concord then made a deal with Cracker Barrel
to release the album, and the move resulted
in Montgomery filing a $5 million lawsuit.
He claimed that Nancy Jones didn't have the
right to sell the record in the first place,
and they definitely didn't have permission
to release it.
A fatal shooting at a Cleveland Cracker Barrel
has resulted in a long investigation and lawsuits
filed by family members of the people 
there.
In 2012, Kate Allen was at Cracker Barrel
with her husband, Kevin, and their two daughters.
They were celebrating the birthday of one
of their girls, but she was also telling her
husband she was leaving him in the wake of
numerous domestic violence charges, convictions,
and reports filed with local police.
After the conversation, Kevin Allen left the
restaurant, returned with a shotgun, then
shot his wife and two daughters.
Police arrived, and the shooter was shot and
killed at the restaurant.
While his wife and one daughter passed at the
restaurant, the other daughter passed away
about a month later.
Not long after, Kate Allen's family filed
a lawsuit, condemning Cracker Barrel and the
manager for not offering to help when they
say she approached them for it.
According to eyewitnesses, Kevin Allen had
taken his wife's car keys before leaving to
fetch his shotgun.
She had allegedly approached the manager and
asked to be allowed to hide in the restaurant
with her girls until someone came to help
them, but later the manager gave two different
statements and told two different stories
that made it unclear just what their conversations
had been.
She hadn't been offered the hiding place she'd
wanted, and in late 2016 a judge found enough
reason to allow the lawsuit against Cracker
Barrel to proceed.
Go back through Cracker Barrel's recent history,
and you'll find a whole slew of sexual harassment
lawsuits.
In 2006, the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission issued a press release on the chain's
agreement to pay out $2 million to resolve
a lawsuit brought by 51 former and current
employees who were subjected to not only 
harassment, but racial harassment that was
very similar to the working conditions outlined
in the massive 2004 lawsuit.
The following year, Nation's Restaurant News
reported that they were spending $270,000
to settle another lawsuit brought by five
former female employees in New Mexico.
And, in 2009, the EEOC reported they were
handing out another $255,000 to settle yet
another harassment lawsuit that not
only claimed male employees created a hostile
work environment, but that Cracker Barrel's
corporate refused to take the claims seriously.
That's not the end of the story, either.
In 2007, Cracker Barrel turned around and
sued several of their insurance companies
when they refused to cover the first $2 million
payout for the 2006 verdict.
According to Insurance Journal, the insurance
providers claimed that the lawsuit wasn't
something that was covered under the policy,
while Cracker Barrel claimed their carriers
consistently denied their insurance policy
obligations by refusing to reimburse.
On February 27, 2017, Bradley Reid Byrd kicked
off one of the biggest social media scandals
of the year when he posted a rant on his personal
Facebook page, followed up by a direct question
on Cracker Barrel's Facebook page about a
week later.
The topic?
Why did you fire my wife?
According to Eater, literally all of Cracker
Barrel's social media accounts were deluged
with angry comments from customers who were
taking up the cause of getting “hashtag-justice-for-brad’s-wife."
Even Instagram photos of delicious-looking
pancakes were flooded with comments about
how Brad's wife wasn't going to be enjoying
them any time soon, and it kept going on and
on.
Some even started a Change.org petition on
the Byrds' behalf.
While Brad claimed his wife's termination
came just days before she was due to receive
a vacation payout, Cracker Barrel continued
to keep quiet over the whole thing.
Cracker Barrel fired long-time manager Belinda
Jones in February 2016, after she had been
working for them for 21 years.
The reason they gave was that she had been
handing out discounts to friends and family,
but Jones claimed that her liberal use of
discounts was allowed within company policy,
and that corporate had even taken notes of
how her sales were doing, pre- and post-discount.
The real reason for her termination, she claimed,
was rooted in a conversation she had with
her district manager.
Jones claimed the manager asked her not only
about her husband's health but of the costs
of his cancer treatments, and her responses
kicked off an investigation into her discount
use.
Other managers who gave discounts in a similar
way weren't fired, her lawsuit claimed, and
Jones's camp says it was just an excuse to
fire her, get out from under the costly cancer
treatments, and replace her with a younger
manager.
The case is ongoing.
Cracker Barrel has had a few lawsuits filed
against them for their handling of current
and prospective employees with disabilities,
too.
In 2013, the Dayton Daily News reported that
they were being sued by Johnny Wills, who
was fired from his general manager job because
he had been diagnosed with a rare liver disease.
Wills, who was named general manager of the
year in 2007, was diagnosed in 2008.
The condition forced him to take more time
off than expected, he ended up on a work improvement
plan for reasons Wills said were bogus, and
he was told to hand in a resignation letter
in 2010.
Later, a jury found that his resignation was
not forced, as he had claimed, and sided with
Cracker Barrel.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
stepped in on another case in 2018, when the
National Law Review says they took up the
cause of a deaf man who had been denied employment
as a dishwasher because of his disability.
The applicant showed up for a scheduled interview,
was told the manager who was supposed to do
the interview wasn't there, and other store
managers refused to conduct an interview at
all because they weren't comfortable trying
to communicate with him.
But that wasn't the only time Cracker Barrel
got in trouble for its failure to properly
accommodate disabled people.
It's a business's responsibility to be accessible
to all customers, and in 2014, Cracker Barrel
was sued because they had failed to do that.
Business Insider says it was Sarah Heinz of
the U.S. Women's Wheelchair Basketball Team
who brought the lawsuit against Cracker Barrel.
It was based on a simple fact: when she tried
to use the handicapped parking spaces at the
restaurant, she found they were so steep that
her wheelchair just rolled away before she
could get into it.
Heinzl's suit was based in Pennsylvania, but
the problem was much more widespread than
that.
The case cited 107 restaurants that weren't
up to code and didn't adhere to the guidelines
put in place by the Americans with Disabilities
Act.
Cracker Barrel was given 30 months to fix
those problems, and slightly longer than that
to fix any other problems found by surveys
at other locations.
New locations would need to earn certificates
of compliance to show there were no problems
at new restaurants, Heinzl was awarded $7,500,
and Cracker Barrel was ordered to pay $830,000
in legal fees.
Food poisoning outbreaks are terrifying, and
one repeatedly affected plenty of customers
in southwestern Michigan in 2017 and 2018.
According to MLive, 11 cases of salmonella
were reported to the Kalamazoo County Health
and Community Services Department, and it
was traced to Cracker Barrel.
Workers and health officials tried to track
down the precise source of the strain, but
here's where things get extra terrifying:
they couldn't find it.
The restaurant closed first for a complete
kitchen remodel, then a few months later,
they closed to upgrade the dish room.
They got a clean bill of compliance, reopened
and closed again when the salmonella reappeared.
Cracker Barrel notes that it's not a supply
chain problem, and it's a type of salmonella
only found in southwest Michigan.
The county's health department called it a
significant salmonella contamination, and
since they just couldn't get rid of it, they
closed that location permanently.
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