While retail steals the focus around the holidays, restaurants can also thrive during the season. Thanksgiving is typically the busiest day of the year for Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, the chain known for Southern eats and gift shops carrying nostalgic tchotchkes and apparel. Heat-and-serve meals, including turkey dinners, as well as an assortment of ornaments, toys and gift baskets are in the spotlight for Cracker Barrel this winter.

Cracker Barrel’s latest holiday push arrives amid a high-stakes strategic reinvention of the brand, which has copped to waning relevance and is contending with fresh proxy fights from investors ahead of its annual shareholder meeting on Nov. 21. The long-term transformation plan involves revamps of stores, a massive menu overhaul, a bigger focus on digital and off-premise dining and an evolution of Cracker Barrel’s brand.

Cracker Barrel in July appointed Sarah Moore, a hospitality industry veteran, as CMO to bolster appeal with a more modern audience. The 55-year-old company is expanding its first rewards program and rejiggering its marketing strategy to better capitalize on TikTok, an app that is propelling products like embroidered sweatshirts to Gen Z virality. Comparable sales at Cracker Barrel restaurants were up 0.4% in the company’s fiscal fourth quarter, with menu prices increasing 4.2%, while comparable retail sales fell 4.2%.

“Sarah’s hospitality focused leadership and deep experience evolving brands and accelerating growth across all disciplines of marketing will help us drive our strategic transformation and brand love as we reclaim our position as an industry leader,” said Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino, who took on the top role last year, in a statement around Moore’s appointment. 

Moore, who joined Cracker Barrel from MGM Resorts International, recently spoke with Marketing Dive about her outlook on partnerships, loyalty and consumer price consciousness. 

The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

MARKETING DIVE: You joined a just few months ago but are already entering an important sales time. How early were you starting to think about Thanksgiving and what are you focused on?

SARAH MOORE: Because it is such an important window, the work on this season started long before I joined. The team put so much focus into driving innovation around the holiday season and exposing the storytelling around how the the brand stays true to its roots, delivering something for everybody. We are focusing on a sense of discovery with some new items, whether it would be through the menu or through our retail store. 

How have you selected the right items to promote around Thanksgiving? 

We just celebrated our 55th birthday, and one thing I learned coming into this brand is how much affinity there is with our core customers. This evolution is about staying true to who we are, but finding new ways to showcase the things that our core customers love while opening those up to potential new customers. 

We took some of our items that we’re known for and we showcased them in new ways [such as Cinnamon Swirl French Toast and a DIY Hot Chocolate Bar]. You’ll start to see that in the holiday menu. 

A bigger trend for dine-in restaurants is winning over the next generation in Gen Z while not losing sight of people who already like the brand. How do you gauge what’s correct to switch up?

It’s about retaining a balance of knowing who we are but meeting prospective new customers where they are. Our retail store has such a sense of discovery that products are going viral all the time. If you go to TikTok, you’ll see Gen Z is loving some of our apparel. We’re getting compared to Anthropologie when it comes to our quality. 

Shaboozey [the alt-country singer] posted himself in front of Cracker Barrel a few weeks ago. We’re coming up in top podcast conversations. This brand has a lot of cultural connection and we have a real opportunity to continue fueling that, but we need to recognize those customers, initiate that dialogue and invite them in to come experience the rest of what Cracker Barrel has to offer.

When you think about TikTok and the broader cultural connection, is that something Cracker Barrel used to underleverage? As a CMO, did you see some things where you went, “We’re not doing enough here”? 

Absolutely. There’s two parts to it: TikTok, as a channel, is emerging. A lot of the marketing teams at different brands are still learning how to use these channels. But I do think that the nature of our brand has been humble and it has been a bit more earnest. Again, we’re organically showing up in the conversation, so it’s on us to reach out and engage with those customers because the product is there. 

When you talk about popping up on podcasts or TikTok, those are very fast-moving conversations. How do you keep your finger on the pulse? 

There isn’t a single tool or service that’s gonna do that for us. It’s about the scrappiness of our team. We’re finding this stuff because our team is paying attention. It’s about real-time agility but also knowing the spaces that your brand’s gonna play in. Sometimes you get surprised: We were mentioned on the Smartless podcast by Jason Bateman. 

You have a background in the hospitality industry. What is the most valuable thing you’ve brought over? 

I was in the hospitality industry for 20 years. It’s all about understanding the guests’ mindset, why they’re choosing to spend their discretionary dollars with you and ensuring that they feel grateful, appreciated and valued for that decision. In the restaurant industry, there is a lot of noise. Nobody delivers greater hospitality than Cracker Barrel, so that’s very ownable and it’s one of the reasons I came to this brand. 

There is some overlap with your past role in relation to loyalty. Cracker Barrel last year launched a rewards program. What has your approach to building that out been? 

Our loyalty program is still in its infancy. We’re only a year old, but we are thrilled with the momentum that we’ve seen. We have over 6 million members, so the organic growth has been remarkable. The most valuable members mean more to us from a frequency standpoint and from a customer value standpoint. Our ability to engage with them in a meaningful way is through CRM and ensuring that they know they have first access or get sneak peeks. It’s that they know that we’re prioritizing them and rewarding them for their loyalty, but also driving engagement with the program in a profitable way. We know this is going to be an incredible growth mechanism for us.

Have you shaken up your approach to marketing services at all? We're talking about social listening and loyalty being, in some cases, newer areas for Cracker Barrel. 

A brand marketing organization always has to be looking at the right ecosystem of partners, especially as our worlds change year over year. As part of our transformation, we are taking a hard look at who the right partners are to go on this journey with us. It’s definitely something we’re looking at. We’ll have more to share in the future.

Across the restaurant category, price consciousness and value are big themes. Cracker Barrel has emphasized value in its recent ads. How are you striking a balance between that and communicating hospitality? 

It’s a good problem to have. We have a lot of emotion that comes with the brand. We have incredible promotional windows that we open. The nature of our menu is built-in quality, value and abundance. For us, it’s just ensuring that we’re telling the right messages at the right time. It’s about paying really close attention to what channels are activated where and who the right customer is. It’s a dance, but we are not swinging too far one way or the other. 

Are the holidays the real “on” time for Cracker Barrel’s paid media?

In this window, it’s about full channel integration and ensuring that we’re speaking consistently across all of our channels. This holiday season, we’re going to up our storytelling channels. That goes again back to social media, our use of content creators and PR. That will be balanced out by strong paid media support, but the focus for us is not one channel over the other. 

What is at the top of your wishlist as CMO? 

There’s a sense of “if you know, you know” with Cracker Barrel, and that’s driving a lot of that virality on TikTok. As the CMO, my greatest wish for this brand is for everyone to see what those who know see. Cracker Barrel has so much to offer, from apparel to gifting to home to toys to kids to candy. It is curated better than any of your favorite little boutiques.

Is there something I didn't ask that you'd want to highlight?

Another marketing lever that we’re going to start pushing on is partnerships and activations. We showed up at ChainFest this year for the first time ever. We know we have a great opportunity and a lot of brands want to partner with us. Creating interesting collaborations to showcase the evolved positioning of Cracker Barrel is really exciting. 

Sometimes, with brand collaborations, it’s an earned media play and a bit of a head-scratcher. It gets a headline but doesn’t build long-term equity. How do you assess the right partners based on Cracker Barrel’s positioning? 

There isn’t one way to do it. We’re building a new partnership framework that’s going to ultimately identify and vet what partners do what. Is it an earned play, is it a long-term new business driver, is it a revenue generator or is it an operational partner? Some of them might just be great buzz opportunities. Sometimes you want the head-scratcher, but there’s a time and a place for all the right partnerships.