That Time Cracker Barrel Was Called 'Woke' For Serving Plant-Based Sausage

If you've taken part in American public discourse in the past few years, you've definitely heard the word "woke." The American right wing has made it its major talking point, with Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis even deriding the "woke mind virus" in his campaign announcement speech. It's one of those words you can't escape, even if you can't quite say what it means. But that's the thing about "woke": It doesn't really mean anything. Because its meaning is so amorphous (one might even say nonexistent), the term can be weaponized to describe ... well, basically anything the speaker doesn't like.

This leads to some things getting called "woke" for reasons that make zero sense whatsoever, and there's perhaps no finer example of this than the time conservatives got really mad at Cracker Barrel — traditionally one of the most conservative restaurant chains, at least in outward appearance — for putting a plant-based sausage on the menu. It makes sense if you've forgotten this in the wake of all the other "wokeness" uproars that companies (particularly Bud Light) have faced in 2023, but at the time, this was a whole thing — and it was silly enough that it bears re-examining.

In late 2022, Cracker Barrel paired with Impossible Foods – creators of the Impossible Burger — to introduce a new menu item: plant-based sausages. It's worth noting that this new item didn't displace any existing ones, and you could still get as many pork products at Cracker Barrel as your clogged arteries could possibly desire. They just wanted to give vegetarians another option.

But that wasn't good enough for a wide swath of rank-and-file American right wingers. Even acknowledging the existence of vegetarians (or just someone trying to watch what they ate) was an existential threat to the American way of life. The company's Facebook page was flooded by comments decrying the restaurant as having gone woke for giving customers the option to eat plants, something human beings have been doing for millions of years. "I just lost respect for a once great Tennessee company," one comment read (via CNN), and really, that says it all.

Interestingly, Cracker Barrel didn't retreat from its position. It posted an image on Instagram of a pork sausage and a plant-based one living in harmony and never removed the item from its menu; it's still there if you go and check. It makes sense; the introduction of the Impossible Sausage was part of a larger effort to rebrand and try to broaden its appeal beyond its existing customer base by bringing in a younger crowd. Ultimately, this seemed to be all smoke and no fire; though there was an initial stock dip at the end of 2022, the company's numbers are significantly up in 2023.

Besides, this was hardly the first time (or the second, or the third) that Cracker Barrel was embroiled in some sort of scandal — the only difference was that this time, the controversy was extremely silly. Less so was when one location possibly accidentally displayed a noose (or something that closely resembled one) in its dining room. Or when the company got sued for accidentally serving a customer a beverage consisting entirely of cleaning solution. Or when it had to settle multiple lawsuits over the mistreatment of Black customers. Or when its own servers sued for tip theft. In contrast to all of these, customers getting mad about a vegetarian option seems pretty tame.