South-based fast food chain Cracker Barrel has been blown up for “waking up” by a few of its customers eating cookies and gravy after posting a photograph of a rainbow rocking chair to have fun Pride Month.
Along with serving huge servings of country staples, the chain is beloved for the Tennessee-made rocking chairs that line the porches of all Old Country Stores crammed with Cracker Barrel trinkets.
The network thus honored Pride Month in June with an Instagram photo of a rocking chair with each picket slat painted a unique color of the rainbow in a nod to the Pride flag.
“Everyone seems to be all the time welcome at our table (and our rainbow rocker),” Cracker Barrel captioned the photo.
The post immediately outraged social media users, with over 2,000 comments in lower than 23 hours.
“Just run your online business and stay out of politics!” one commentator wrote, while others accused the brand of “rainbow laundering” – when the brand promotes a pro-LGBTQ Pride Month message in the spirit of promoting but doesn’t genuinely support the movement.
“Where has your respect for veterans gone? And yet you have fun the month of somebody’s sexuality? Kinda weird,” wrote one other, although Cracker Barrel shared a post in honor of his veterans on November 11.
Others have moved to Twitter to say they were “quite shocked” that Cracker Barrel of Tennessee made such a post.
“I used to like Cracker Barrels, but I can do without them,” one other he wrote. “After all, everyone needs to be welcome, so why specifically tailor your online business to 1 group?”
One other indignant user he joked that the chain “gone mad, that is for sure!”
Other tweetmeanwhile, he called for a boycott to be certain Cracker Barrel suffers the same fate as Bud Light, which has seen sales increase since celebrating the social media star’s “365 Days of Girlhood” on April 1.
“Does Cracker Barrel have any idea who its customers are? It’s as easy to stop going to Cracker Barrel because it is to stop buying Bud Light,” the post reads.
Bud Light reported a 23.9% drop in sales in the week ending May 27 consequently of the ongoing boycott – barely higher than a 25.7% drop the week before, in line with data from Bump Williams Consulting and NielsonIQ.
The devastating decline puts the struggling beer brand on the right track to lose its No. 1 status in the US to Modelo, which has overtaken the beer brand in sales for weeks.
Critics of Cracker Barrel wondered why the chain, which has greater than 660 locations nationwide, “hasn’t learned from others who’ve made this error.”
“Silly, silly, silly decision,” commented one other controversial Instagram post.
Cracker Barrel also shared a pro-Pride photo on Facebook that provides “sad”, “indignant” and “love” buttons along with the traditional “like”. Greater than 4,000 people said they were saddened by the post, while greater than 2,000 viewers were indignant with it.
Amongst over 10,000 comments, many said goodbye to Cracker Barrel for “waking up”.
“Goodbye. I liked you in the past but your values have modified,” one commented, while one other said the network had “lost a customer” due to the post.
One other said they were “drained of constructing us do that shit,” nodding again to corporations like Bud Light manufacturer Anheuser-Busch, in addition to retailers Goal, Walmart and Kohl’s, which recently got here under fire for Pride Month celebrations.