We’ve all had our fair share of strange requests at jobs we’ve had in the past. Sometimes your employer wants you to clean a specific way, greet customers with a specific saying, or maybe there are some practices that you feel would be more efficient if they were done differently.
©Getty Images
We’ve had some of our coworkers here work at Disney World, and yes, they’ve got some stories to tell, but we just got word about a surprings new rule that a popular restaurant has implemented for their employees, and it’s gotten us thinking — yes, we’ve had some weird rules at our jobs in the past, but none of them have ever been quite like this!
According to the Independent, the Wall Street Journal shared an internal message that went out to employees recently from Cracker Barrel. In this new memo, it reads that “employees are expected to dine at a Cracker Barrel store for all or the majority of meals while traveling, whenever practical, based on location and schedule.”
©Cracker Barrel
This rule is only for business trips where they’re traveling with the company. The new memo also bans the company from “reimbursing alcohol purchases on business trips unless workers pay out of pocket” or get approval ahead of time from senior leadership to celebrate special occasions.
©Independent
Why this change? Well, things didn’t go well for the company when they unveiled their new logo and plans to revamp the look of over 650 stores to become “more modern” in August 2025, and it received so much uproar and pushback that the company lost $94 million in market value in a single day. These changes are partly in an effort to make back some of the money lost, especially because in December 2025, guests started to complain about the food quality at many locations. Customers noticed the restaurant chain was using pre-cut cookies instead of the freshly rolled dough used previously, as well as sides being cooked in ovens instead of on stovetops, changing the flavor.
©Cracker Barrel
We’re curious to see how this goes for the company and if there will be any pushback from employees. Be sure to keep following DFB for more.
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How do you feel about this change? Tell us in the comments!
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A policy like this is not terribly unusual for large companies. I work at a company that not only tells us where we can stay on business trips (as well as a lot of rules about dining), but we have to book it in a certain way through our company. It’s not enough just to stay where we’re supposed to stay. If we don’t follow all those rules/steps, the expenses are not reimbursable. We love eating at CB, but they have had some major misreads of their customers and potential customers in recent years. They’ve made bad mistakes with the menu, and not even mainly price increases. CB and companies like them (cough cough) need to take note that sometimes throwing out the ‘old’ in favor of the new just means losing the customers you’ve got. The youngest members of our group revolted and almost kept us from eating at a CB when they learned it was one of the modernized ones (youngest meaning young Gen Z/Alpha – so young).