As most chain restaurants go, Cracker Barrel restaurants offer the same consistent food and theming at any location you visit. The charm of Cracker Barrel lies in its old-timey atmosphere, but even if you’re a regular visitor, you might not have noticed some of the smaller details. Cracker Barrel has undeniable country charm with their restaurant décor, with their adjacent store offering up all the toys, gifts, and old-fashioned candy you can handle.
If you’ve ever stopped for a moment to look at all of the objects and photos that decorate the walls, however, you might think there’s no way that every restaurant can look exactly the same. After all, there’s so much stuff on the walls, but somehow every location carries the same theme and similar items and you would swear they’re all pretty much the same.
There are some definite areas of décor that are absolutely the same, no matter which Cracker Barrel restaurant you visit (and there are over 600 locations!). You’ll find both an antique ox yoke and a horseshoe over the front door of every store, giving it that decidedly country feel while offering up the old horseshoe good luck charm (when it’s hung with the points up to make a “U” that means it can fill up with good luck).
Before you even set foot in the restaurant or store, there is always a row of rocking chairs lined up outside, making it the perfect spot to wait for your table to be ready or just unwind after you’ve eaten too much food. The chairs are handmade in the USA and also for sale… in fact, they’re the chain’s top seller. Outside of every bathroom in a Cracker Barrel you’ll find a traffic light, too, which seems a cheeky shoutout to having to “go,” but no matter the meaning, be on the lookout on your next visit.
Similarly, you will always find an oversized checkerboard set up… where else? On top of a cracker barrel. This is a callback to simpler times when country stores set up barrels full of soda crackers where the patrons would stand around munching and having small talk. Kind of like the old-fashioned version of a water cooler.
According to Cracker Barrel’s website, each store has an average of 1,000 decor items. It must be a blast when they open a new location and all of those photos and items need to be hung on the walls.
You can also visit their website to buy items featured in their stores as well as many more products not seen at a physical Cracker Barrel location.
Among the comments left on social media about the Cracker Barrel decor was one person who was surprised: “I didn’t know that all of them have the same elements in their eclectic decor. I have seen these items in the one near us where we go often.”
Another commenter said they did know of these things, as an employee at one store, adding, “But I didn’t know they were in every store, which is very cool!”
