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Nostalgia is the secret sauce right now in the restaurant industry.
The “Back to Starbucks” throwback campaign is in full swing, Taco Bell is resurrecting fan-favorite items with Y2K-themed marketing, and Chili’s is playing up the vintage vibes by bringing back its “Baby Back Ribs” jingle 25 years after its debut.
Even new concepts, like Elon Musk’s Tesla Diner, have drawn headlines for betting that classic Americana still holds its timeless aesthetic appeal — a retro-futuristic trend that industry insiders previously told Business Insider is likely to continue.
And consumers are eating it up.
Cracker Barrel went in the opposite direction. The brand, known for its old-school Southern atmosphere and down-home menu, recently rolled out a slicker, more modern rebrand that critics say missed the mark and alienated its core audience of older, more traditional diners.
Business Insider spoke with more than half a dozen company leaders, industry analysts, and brand strategists about what’s driving consumers to reminisce on their favorite brands and seek out the simplicity of childhood favorites, served up just the way they remember.
“Nostalgia is what I call a comfort currency,” Rebecca Hoeft, CEO of the brand consulting firm Morris Hoeft Group, told Business Insider. “We’re in a time of uncertainty — we’re not sure where the economy is going to go, people are unsure if they’re going to have their jobs tomorrow, there’s divisiveness happening politically, and it seems like everyone’s on edge. But in times of uncertainty, I think that there’s an opportunity for brands, because people start to crave familiarity.”
Throwback campaigns done right
The World Economic Forum in May reported that uncertainty is the defining theme of the global economic environment, with 82% of the forum’s chief economists deeming the rate of uncertain sentiment very high. In August, the US unemployment rate rose to 4.3%, the highest rate since October 2021. Gallup polls from 2025 find that the US political parties are historically polarized ideologically, and a record-low number of adults are proud to be American.
Whether a strategic response to the uncertainty or simply a well-timed coincidence, many restaurant marketing campaigns harken back to a bygone era when times were simpler, jingles were snappier, and your favorite foods were readily available at a wallet-friendly price.
McDonald’s has brought back its iconic cast of characters, the Hamburglar and friends, with its McDonaldland meals, and earlier this month launched its “Extra Value” campaign, which includes a $5 breakfast meal and an $8 Big Mac or McNuggets combo.
Chili’s opened a Scranton, Pennsylvania, location in April, decked out with decor from a 2005 Chili’s-themed episode of “The Office” and has doubled down on its Triple Dipper, expanding the offerings available to mix and match when ordering the viral appetizer platter that has been a star of the chain’s menu for decades.
Taco Bell has long leveraged the power of nostalgia with its “Decades” menu, seasonally bringing back fan favorites from the ’80s, ’90s, and beyond. This year, the brand went all-in on the early aughts with its Y2K-themed menu items, which CMO Taylor Montgomery told Business Insider has served as a generational baton in addition to a familiar campaign for older Taco Bell fans who loved the brand during the era of butterfly clips and cheetah print.
“When we do things like ‘Decades,’ it brings back all of our old fans, but we found it’s actually a gateway to bring in new fans,” Montgomery said. “Y2K fashion is up like 200% on search — that’s all Gen Z. So what we’ve found is doing something like this is actually a way to welcome the next generation of Taco Bell fans — we call them cultural rebels — into the brand, which we think is really fun. We’re actually talking to two different audiences at once.”
Cracker Barrel’s modernity misstep
While companies like Taco Bell see consumers are craving comfort — and are leaning in to give it to them — brand experts who spoke to Business Insider said Cracker Barrel’s modern change served up discontent.
The effort, which has largely been rolled back, included renovating some restaurants to reimagine its quaint country store offerings, and the short-lived streamlining of its logo, which removed the iconic “Old Timer” Uncle Herschel and barrel from its branding.
Though political influencers fanned much of the fervor around the chain’s new logo, fans of the brand previously told Business Insider they were divided over Cracker Barrel’s makeover and hoped the company would revert to its nostalgia-heavy aesthetic and menu options.
Representatives for Cracker Barrel did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Kelly O’Keefe, founding partner of the marketing consultancy Brand Federation, told Business Insider it will take a while for the “wound to heal” after what he called Cracker Barrel’s “botched” attempt to rebrand.
“They created an update that was somewhat ill-conceived, and it felt like a betrayal to their core customers,” O’Keefe said, adding that the rebrand violated what he considers to be the most important rule of rebranding: to understand the internal culture driven by a brand’s most loyal fans.
O’Keefe added: “Not the ones you’re trying to win that you don’t have, but the ones that you already have that care about you, because you betray them at your own risk.”
Heather Holmes, founder of the Tennessee-based marketing firm, Publicity for Good, is a longtime fan of Cracker Barrel, which is headquartered in the state. She told Business Insider her fondest memories of the brand hinge upon its old-fashioned atmosphere, including rocking chairs and doilies, which she said encourages families to slow down and enjoy each other’s company.
“The sad thing is, to me, that Cracker Barrel is not about the food — I don’t think Cracker Barrel is a 10 for flavor,” Holmes said. “Why it’s a 10, though, is the experience and the ambiance and the chairs and everything else that makes it worth going to — so to change that rips away the heart and the mission and the history of the brand.”
Of course, no one can begrudge a struggling brand from trying to reinvent itself. Cracker Barrel’s stock has been on a steady decline since 2021, and the company’s net income fell to $40.9 million in 2024, down from $99 million in 2023.
In its attempt to stay relevant to a wider audience, Cracker Barrel found itself in the “unenviable” position of navigating a firestorm of its own making, Michael Goldberg, a professor of design and innovation at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, told Business Insider.
“They tried this ruthless modernize-or-die pivot, scrubbing the Old Timer to court new diners and Wall Street — and they failed across the board,” Eric Schiffer, chairman of Reputation Management Consultants, told Business Insider. “I mean, this was a toxic erasure of nostalgia, and the customers heard, ‘F you.'”
As other chains thrive by leaning into familiar flavors and retro campaigns, the industry’s nostalgia wave underscores what Cracker Barrel’s misstep laid bare: Today’s diners don’t need reinvention — they want reassurance.
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