Opened first restaurant in what became a national brand in Lebanon, Tenn., in 1969
Article Source: msnbc.com
from:msnbc.comCracker Barrel founder Dan Evins dead at 76
Seeded on Mon Jan 16, 2012 3:03 PM EST (msnbc.com)
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Let's discriminate against an African American to honor this great man's life! I gain two pounds just thinking about CB's chix-n-dumplings!!!
What are you talking about? What did I miss?
yeah, they've been busted a few times for being discriminatory. Guy probably died from eating there too much...
in what way does this discriminate againt MLK or any other person.
I think what robbo is saying is it's ironic that we're "honoring" this man whose restaurants didn't want to serve black people, and it's MLKJr. day
This man was not a good man, he was a racist and a bigot. The company fired employees simply because they were gay in the early 90s, they refused to serve Black customers, discriminated against minorities in hiring. In 2004 they had to pay $8.7 Million to settle numerous shuts and in 2005 they finally implemented a non-discrimination policy....So yes the company changed...but NOT until after this bigot was no longer running it. And only after a shareholder resolution demanding it passed with 58% of the vote--and if you know how often shareholder resolutions pass you would know this is astounding.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050618/news_1b18cracker.html
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2004-05-07-cracker-barrel_x.htm
I shed no tears for this person who fostered a atmosphere of accepting discrimination and fostering hate.
This is why N---ers are N---ers, is because a White man started this business. Stay away from CB if it is ill-suited for you taste, (Which is crap). You're an ass.
Look what jumped from the "Cracker barrel" Do people call you Dick?
And even without him being in charge the last 8 years, it continues:
"jacksonville.com/news/crime/2010-09-10/story/fired-jacksonville-waitresses-file-federal-lawsuit-against-cracker"
Mr. Evins left something worthwhile on this Earth. I ate in a Cracker Barrel last evening. After traveling for decades, I - like a lot of other folks - need some vegetables in my diet. Most restaurants now provide pitiful little of that. Evins succeeded because he gave the customer something worth the cost.
Well said Henry!! RIP Mr Evins... know that you gave many of us up north here a real taste of good cooking :) (Please don't change the chickin n dumplins recipe) Thanks!
Mr Evins was a business genius who obviously recognized what people a lot of people like, and did a brilliant job of providing it. Usually, when I go to a Cracker Barrel, the wait is like 20-30 minutes to get a table. Quite frankly, I leave every time, because I find the food to be average, at best.
Even if they have "at best" average food to some folks, I can never remember having a complaint...over food or the staff. It was a welcomed change from the steakhouses that have different names but taste all the same. And Italian isn't Italian if it comes out of a freezer bag, no matter how you try to disguise it. At least the green beans tasted like green beans, the chicken like chicken, and the dessert...YUMMY!
RIP Mr. Evins! I hope your great restaurants don't get changed.
If you don't like food out of a freezer bag I can't imagine why you'd want to eat at Cracker Barrel. Everything I've ever eaten there has obviously come straight from a bag in the freezer or a can. On top of that the food is probably horrible from a nutrition standpoint. I say probably because they STILL don't provide nutritional info and in this day and age the only reason not too is because you don't want people to know just how bad it is. The kind of preprocessed garbage they serve is typically loaded with extra fat and sodium. I can only assume he lived to the age of 76 because he DIDN'T eat at his own restaurants.
SO SAD, yeah right, so sad that this company was able to run the oldest and simplest con on their customers, tell them what they want to hear and only that while taking their money....this company abuses their employess by requiring adherence to a tyrannical structure and the eradication of any individuality. Also, verbal and psychological abuse is rampant. I have heard some employees called stupid by their so called honest and 'down home' management...what BS. Wake up these people are in it for the money and by the way, alot of their crap is frozen or prepackaged.
I've been to the Cracker Barrel in many different locations where they have sent me on business travel. The food has always been of great quality, as was the service. As for waiting 20 to 30 minutes, my maximum wait has been 5 to 10 minutes with the normal being much shorter. In addition the prices are better than most. It's impossible to say where spider went, but maybe he's just a troll. My big fear is that now that the founder is gone, somebody will ruin it all in the pursuit of profits.
I love their restaurants! I have a severe sea food allergy and they told me that they may fry their fried chicken in the same grease as their seafood so they made custom changes to my order to avoid me going to the hospital. The people are friendly there too!
Nasty!
Love the Cracker Barrell food and shopping at the gift shop, and so does the rest of my family; Lots of good memories at these restaurants. I especially love the chicken fried chicken with lots of gravy. My condolences to his family, friends, and all of his employees, who will all probably miss him.
Chrissy44,
Quit that, you are making me super hungry...I usually only have breakfast there. I love that place....Uncle Herschal's "spelled wrong" I think??
RIP Mr. Evins///
rest assured , a major percentage of those employees wil not miss him.. they might even celebrate.. as a former employee I know what I am talking about..
I am sure all of the gay employees will not miss him. The chain was known to FIRE any person they found out was gay saying it's a 'family' restaurant and 'those' kind of people were not welcome. Apparently, blacks were not welcome too. Guess to be part of their family you had to be white, straight and republican.
Bull@!$%#!! I worked there for over 10 years and I know what I'm talking about. In all that time not one person that I worked with in my stores was fired for being gay or a minority and not one time was anyone refused to be waited on because of the color of their skin.
So while I know that there was a couple of issues with some store in Illinois it was NOT a company wide policy and was not happening in every Cracker Barrel.
I love how some people think they know something when they don't @!$%#.
I am from Wa. state, stopped in at one in Ga. People were nice and OMG they had black people working there too!! Behr your a joke, there are more racist people up north Than down south I think.
workers were great, incuding the black workers, (I had to throw that in again for behr) and food was good, alot better than any "family" resturaunts up in this state. Wish we had one, I dont think people could even "act" that nice up here if they tried.
Such morons. Keep living your life with your head in the sand. Just because YOU worked there for 10years doesn't mean it didn't happen. Bet you never saw a black or gay person lynched too. Doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Maybe behind the trash bin where you wouldn't go an get your hands dirty.
Their food is good. Dan sounded like a good man. Gotta give him credit for a fine chain of restaurants! By the way.....who are we/you discriminating against? Just another rainy Monday here, nothing special about this day more so than any other day. School here is closed for some reason though, I didn't bother to ask anyone why. I'm getting hungry...what's for supper?
dth,
I think you were being condisending ???
Cracker Barrel got busted a few times fairly recently for not serving black people. that's the discrimination...
More like being a jack***!
where?? show me a newspaper clipping or article. At The Cracker Barrel I stopped at in Ga., the waitress that waited on us was black, and very polite, and there were black customers there as well.
Best breakfast food anywhere, RIP my man.
I totally agree Drezz>>>
Yep...can't beat the Smokehouse breakfast combo!
ROP Ol Danny Boy!
most likely died from eating what was on the menu !
Mark must be Yankee
Mark, Don't be a stooge.
Hey Mark S,
I give you permission to not eat there A----H----
That was not nice too say
Mark S-971793: I'll bet Fathers Day is a very confusing and trying occasion for you.
Linda,
Don't pizz off us Yanks. You know what happened last time :)
"The war of southern surrender"
....or "Northern terrorism" depending on who's barn, or city they burnt down.
Sad to hear of his passing. Even though I'm a lifelong Northerner, I LOVE stopping at Cracker Barrel. I just stopped at one outside Knoxville, TN last week.
I love the food-especially breakfast; and the country store side is always a treat- I love the old-time candies that you cant find almost anywhere else.
RIP Mr. Evins. I remember eating at the first Cracker Barrel before there was a chain of restaurants.
While there are plenty of "high fat" items on the menu (true of any American chain) it's still possible to eat something healthy at CB. They have soups, salads and other lighter items now so the healthy choice is up to the individual.
I think the restaurant, gift shop, and casual country store feel is what made it successful.
Although I only eat there about once a year ... I always look forward to it as a change of pace from the typical restaurants one encounters along the highway.
I'd check the sodium content of those so-called "healthy" items before I got too excited. I've had their soup and it reminded me of the crap you dump out of a can with enough sodium to cure a ham.
their soup is out of large cans shipped b y the box loads
if traveling use a GPS device so u can find all the restaurantsat an exit.. so you can by pass preprocessed junk food at crackle hackle
Uhm, no it's not. I have actually helped make the soup and most all of it is made from scratch in the restaurants. They don't use real butter in anything and while they used to make EVERYTHING from scratch in the restaurant they found that it became entirely to impossible to make their employees actually follow the procedures and recipes in the directions and started having the food made specifically for the company.
I can guarantee that their food is far healthier than most of the restaurants that you can go to and if you can't figure out how to eat healthy without guidance from everywhere else you aren't too bright.
Please define "made from scratch". Opening several cans and dumping them together in one pot is not "made from scratch", but I suspect that is basically what happens.
Too funny, well your suspicions are wrong. Their canned food consists of apples, green beans, blackberries, cherries, peaches (for their fruit topping, that they add ingredients to), pickles, mushrooms, mayo, cole slaw wet mix and their salad dressing.
They actually do cut fresh potatoes, carrots, celery, etc., by hand to put in their soups (cream of potato, cream of broccoli, turkey noodle, chicken noodle and chili) the only soups they get in that are made for them and then flash frozen to perserve the flavor is vegetable soup (because is's served everyday) and clam chowder.
Their dumplings are made from scratch, their biscuit are mixed and rolled out in the store, made from scratch, their corn muffins are, yep you guessed it, made from scratch. There vegetables are also flash frozen (no different then if you bought frozen vegetables) and then prepared the rest of the way in the restaurant with adding very little salt and as already stated they don't use butter, they use margarine, which depending on your outlook on the two you may be happier with the butter but the margarine has less fat and calries.
Some of their food is high in salt and some high in calories and fat but if someone can't figure out what ones are the worse ones then they aren't too bright.
And what do they use as a base for their soup? Homemade stock, broth dumped out of a can or, worse yet, condensed soup base (aka chicken flavored salt lick). Soups aren't loaded with sodium from the vegtables they add whether they're canned or cut fresh, it's the base that determines whether it is "healthy" or not.
We can go at this all day long if your want to. I worked there for years. Have you ever made home made soup? All soup is made with some kind of stock, and all soup has salt in it for flavor, you can determine your own amount of salt yourself and if you have determined that there soup is too salty for you then don't eat it. They have beef broth that they use in their beef stew. They also have cream of chicken soup that they use in their hashbrown casserole. They have a chicken base that is used to cook their chicken, the chicken base is not canned it is refrigerated, it kind of like buying tomato paste in the tube.
They use chicken base in their chicken noodle soup, they roast turkey breasts in the store (I know I used to cook them, it was a real bitch around Thanksgiving when we had to roast over a hundred of them) they use the cooked turkey for their turkey noodle soup. Have you ever made Chili, I make it at home all the time (no stock needed), they used dried pinto beans and cook them in the store. They use sausage in their chili which makes it tasteir, but also less healthy. Their vegetable soup is no longer made in the store, I'm sure that it has a beef broth base, I would use either beef broth or chicken broth if I cooked it home. Cream of potato and cream of broccoli have no stock in them.
As previously stated they are "homecooking" the old fashioned way, so no much of their food isn't healthy for you, but if you aren't chowing it everyday there's nothing wrong with eating it. It is homemade and if you're a smart person you can figure out how to order the better food on the menu. I thought it was pretty pathetic that they had to design a low carb menu with the exact same food that we already carry (nothing diffrent) because obviously too many people are too stupid to figure out how to order low carb without directions.
Yes, all the time. I save the bones from split chicken breasts or I'll use the carcass of a roasted whole chicken to make my own stock. My point is that if you're using a canned chicken broth or a soup base the end product is going to be loaded with sodium. I do buysome beef broth but even the "reduced sodium" stuff has 20% of the daily requirement of sodium per one cup serving and the can says it has HALF the sodium as the regular stuff. I don't have specific nut info but I know the sup base most restaurants use is worse than that. A one cup serving of CB soup probably has close to half of the daily requirement for sodium.
My point is that just because it is low in fat and calories (which their cream based soups are obviously neither) and just because they use fresh vegetables doesn't make it "healthy". The idea that soup is a "healthy" option is a con used by many restaurants because the stupid people you refer to don't realize that fat and calories aren't the only measure when it comes to judging how good something is for you.
I ate the first time at Cracker Barrel back in about 1972 Greatest breakfast in the
world. Still go once in awhile. BUUTT like everything else Prices went up - quality
started to go down. Got SKIMPY on portions. Still go for breakfast, BUT nothing
else. One thing that wife complanes about-- too much stuff in asles, can't move !!
To the Evins Family,
As an Afro-American, I take great pride in saying "Job well done Mr. Evins". His restaurant took pride in making sure that people of all races were treated fairly. You recieve the same great service whether you were in Kentucky or Virginia. May God bless all of you as you go through this time of sorrow..Thank you!!
tell that to the black people they wouldn't serve. there was more than one incident...
Haaa, NO his restaurant didn't take pride in 'MAKING SURE THAT PEOPLE OF ALL RACES WERE TREATED FAIRLY!
Later, "cracker" barrel man!
Repeating a point in the string that was collapsed:
This man was not a good man, he was a racist and a bigot. The company fired employees simply because they were gay in the early 90s, they refused to serve Black customers, discriminated against minorities in hiring. In 2004 they had to pay $8.7 Million to settle numerous shuts and in 2005 they finally implemented a non-discrimination policy....So yes the company changed...but NOT until after this bigot was no longer running it. And only after a shareholder resolution demanding it passed with 58% of the vote--and if you know how often shareholder resolutions pass you would know this is astounding.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050618/news_1b18cracker.html
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2004-05-07-cracker-barrel_x.htm
I shed no tears for this person who fostered a atmosphere of accepting discrimination and fostering hate.
to "dogateyourhomework,Americamyass,
Over 600 restaurants in 42 states. How many locations did this happen at "fairly recently" as you stated previously? I have been served by black people there recently myself, just I have seen many black people served by white people there over the years too. What is your f'n problem other than being "STUPID"? I say there is a lot more to it than hat you are trying to make it out to be.
Thank you Caroline! I spent the latter half of the 80's and most of the 90's with the company in 6 southern stores, and worked alongside many black folks whom I am grateful to for teaching me much about the southern culture and about myself. It it sad to read some of the commentary particularly on this day, and to realize that some will never move on. Danny has, but I have only fond memories of a dedicated and supportive family. God Bless
Thank you Tazmainer for being an upstanding person.
dth- they didn't have to pay over 8 million in compensation (ordered by the justice department) just because "I'm being stupid"...
don't hate the truth just because it's ugly...
ps- by recently, I mean in the last 20 years. fairly recent in the grand scheme of things- it was the '90's, not too long ago, and long after desegregation and equal rights...
Sorry to say, but he didn't like gays or blacks. Their store fired gay employees, would not serve blacks. He WAS NOT a nice person.
My boyfriend (gay) worked at a CB for quite some time. I've always been suspicious of the hype about "not liking gays." I'm not so sure about it.
I think Caroline was employing some *sarcasm*.
I am so sorry to that the founder of Cracker Barrel died. I absolutely love going their. The breakfast's are out of this world and the food is excellent whether its lunch or supper, My condolences to the family. I wish that there was one closer here to my home in Massachusetts. Their is nothing like southern hospitality. I love it. Its to bad that their's not more of this type of restaurant around.
Best restaurant in town here. Thanks for bringing your concept to the public.....R.I.P.
Good point and thought... I love that place.. A little loud but great food!!!
dano
you might wanna move...
RIP. Thanks for the great place to stop along the highways of America! Cracker Barrel will always be better than those fast food places.
yet somehow just as bad for you if not worse...
Ok, Doyourhomework, we get it! You don't care for Cracker Barrel, now give it a rest, please? Many of us do love it!
Discovered Cracker Barrell on a road trip from AZ - Mi. Liked it so well we ate there every day of the drive, both ways. Wish one was down the road , too far to drive now.
worked for them a long time, started at the first tx. store..Wish the new mgmt. in the home office didnt screw things up so bad. If uncel-H were still here he would bust them in the head....!
Dan founded one of the best places to eat in this country. No matter where you go you can always depend on good food, good service, and friendly people. If you ever have a complaint just call and their customer service will make it right. Hope nothing changes and everone working for Cracker Barrell will remember Dan will still be watching over them.
Wow; I started going into the crackerbarrel not long after he openned, and still do today. He kept the menu and decore as good today as it started over 40 years ago. He did a wonderfull job, and he is to be honoured because he lived by his principles, and the right way to do things. He will be very much missed. R.I.P.
Great unassuming comfort food. Mr. Evins had a good formula. No surpise that it is so successful.
I was born and raised near where the first crackerbarrel was established..My father knew the Evins family and thought a lot of them..I try to go to cracker barrel when I can..It reminds me of home and my youth..He will be missed
i hope you keep the great food at great low prices and not begin to be a corporate operation like darden resturants.
in gods grace..thanks..you will be remembered let the store remain the same
Cracker Barrel is fine if you are white... otherwise they have a problem with you...
Hey Squid,
You are completely wrong and off base. Stop the racist shI t.
That's why i go there!,Great atmosphere, nice polite folks ,good service,reminds you of the "Good Old Days" when folks used to act right,were courteous,and generally acted "Human".
Love how when someone dies, they gloss over all the bad stuff. Maybe he wasn't a racist, but his stores policies were found to be by a court of law...
JUstice he is NOT full of s**t as you said, he is telling the truth, as the Justice Department found and as Cracker Barrel admitted to when they settled the case:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050618/news_1b18cracker.html
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2004-05-07-cracker-barrel_x.htm
I shed no tears for this person who fostered a atmosphere of accepting discrimination and fostering hate.
No, he is 100% correct. Before you white, check YOUR blacks. The restaurant chain discriminated against blacks and gay and continue to do so. It's not racist.... it's the facts!
That part of the country isn't known for being too "cosmopolitan". And in some areas to this day the racists are pretty open about it.
I know, I grew up south of Lebanon and my dad's family are all just east of there.
Just remember, not all white Southerners are like these depicted in these stories. Many of us were raised a lot better and treat everyone with dignity and respect.
I also ate at the #2 store the week it opened and enjoy CB to this day. It's one of the few places on the road that serves the kind of food I grew up eating and cook. I don't see many non-Caucasians working in them to this day but they do. I also see non-Caucasians eating in Cracker Barrels. It's taking too long, but they are changing. Even the stories linked above mention that they are trying to change.
I make better chicken-n-dumplins and meatloaf though. But they got me beat hands down on the greens. I still haven't gotten that recipe figured out.
Condolence to his immediately family and restaurant family. His values and meals are always enjoyable as well as the country store. You can usually find candy items from the candies you enjoyed as a child.
RIP, don't change the menu (too much). I'll have the meatloaf, mashers and green beans please!
Don't forget the heaping helping of bigotry.