America's Frontroads: Spotlight on "The Barrel"

Much has been said of the romance and beauty of backroads America, but too often, these backroads are filled with hillbillies, stoplights, and banjos.

The frontroads of America are well lit, well maintained (except in Arkansas), and reliable. In the coming weeks, we will be featuring profiles of businesses that you will find parked beside the interstates.

May I introduce THE BARREL

Yes, that one… The Cracker Barrel

Cracker Barrel: Did You Know?

• The chain is the single larger purchaser of white flour in America.
• Orders of biscuits and gravy come with your choice of either diabetes or atherosclerosis.
• Every Cracker Barrel is different: some stores have 16 rocking chairs in front, and others have 15 rocking chairs out front.
• No one understands the wooden peg game that you find by the ketchup at your table, but everyone pretends it is charming.
• Pork is very popular here, in all its incarnations. The Tossed Pork Salad features bacon, pan sausage, Canadian bacon, link sausage, and creamy chipoltey mayonnaise dressing.
• Many old people buy something at the Cracker Barrel store after their meal because they think it is expected of them and patriotic.
• Their billboards say it all with the awkward metaphors and faux folksiness that are the hallmarks of their advertising: "Where Comfort Meets Food."
• Please don't try to create a mental picture of this metaphorical meeting of an abstract feeling ("Hi my name is Comfort") and an entire category of physical objects of sustenance ("Hi my name is Food") because it can't be done.

Other billboards feature: Gigantic spoons filled with.... Corn.

It reminds me of a radio ad Cracker Barrel ran in the 1980s.

OLD MAN: "This Comfort sure is good, yum."
SON: "Dad, I think you've had too much Corn."

Wrong answer kid, there's no such thing as too much Comfort, or too much Corn. You can get both at... The Barrel. Jump in sometime!