Past Print: October 2013

Cracker Barrel is a restaurant+store chain founded in 1969 in Lebanon, Kentucky by Dan Ivens. His USP was to provide down-home type food that he remembered as a boy served in the local country store, a place that obviously sold things so the CB restaurants have a shop that sells nostalgic Americana. Currently there are six hundred stores across forty-two States and the company is now the CBRL Group with a revenue stream over $2.6 billion.
The company went public in 1981 and their Annual Reports carried on the flavor of old-time America. The Reports are rather unusual because each one has a stuck-on theme. For 1986 the theme was postcard size recipes, one on the cover and four inside. 1987 used deckle-edged photos (real ones, too) on the cover and four inside. 1988 had silk prize ribbons in various colors. The paper is colored stock and the design carries on the old-time flavor with faded page edges and period graphics.
The actual Financial pages are the same as you would expect in any Annual Report so I haven't included these in the three Reports below. I've always thought the Reports were beautifully designed but oddly there are no credits anywhere. Sticking recipe cards, photos and bits of silk in thousands of copies doesn't come cheap either.
    *Three more reports in February 2017 and March 2018 Archives