NASDAQ: CBRL

During 2026, we faced challenges related to negative publicity from brand initiatives related to our previously-announced strategic plan, including the launch of a new logo and modern test store remodels, to which we responded by returning to our former logo and discontinuing the modern test store remodels during the first quarter of 2026.

Store Format: The format of our stores consists of a trademarked rustic old country-store design offering a full-service restaurant menu that features home-style country food and a wide variety of decorative and functional items such as rocking chairs, holiday and seasonal gifts, toys, apparel, cookware and foods. All stores are freestanding buildings and consist of approximately 20% of gift shop space with the remainder dedicated to our restaurant, training and storage space. Our stores have stone fireplaces and are decorated with antique‑style furnishings and other authentic and nostalgic items, reminiscent of and similar to those found and sold in the past in traditional old country stores. Many of our stores feature front porches with our signature Cracker Barrel rocking chairs, which are a popular item sold by the gift shops and which we invite guests to use while waiting for a table in our dining room or after enjoying a meal.

Products: Our restaurants, which generated approximately 81% of our total revenue in 2026, offer home-style country cooking featuring many of our own recipes that emphasize authenticity and quality. Our restaurants serve breakfast, lunch and dinner daily and offer dine-in, pick-up and delivery services. Menu items are moderately priced. Approximately 93% of our restaurants also serve an assortment of beer and wine.

Breakfast items can be ordered at any time throughout the day and include juices, eggs, pancakes, meats, grits, and a variety of biscuit specialties, such as gravy and biscuits and country ham and biscuits. Lunch and dinner items include fried and grilled chicken, chicken and dumplings, meatloaf, country fried steak, pork chops, fish, country fried shrimp, steak, vegetable plates, sandwiches and salads. We also offer multi-serving takeout family meal baskets. Additionally, from time to time, we feature new items as off-menu specials or on test menus at certain locations to evaluate possible ways to enhance customer interest and identify potential future additions to the menu. We offer weekday lunch specials, which include some of our favorite entrées in lunch-sized portions. Our menu also features weekday and weekend dinner specials that showcase a popular dinner entrée. There is some variation in menu pricing and content in different regions of the country. The average check per guest during 2026 was $15.58, which represents a 3.7% increase over the prior year. We served an average of approximately 4,900 restaurant guests per week in a typical store in 2026.

The following table highlights the price ranges for our meals in 2026:

​ ​ ​

Price Range

Breakfast

$

6.99 to $ 21.99

Lunch and Dinner

$

5.19 to $ 27.49

The following table highlights each day-part’s percentage of restaurant sales in 2026:

Percentage of

Restaurant

​ ​ ​

Sales in 2026

Breakfast Day-Part (until 11:00 a.m.)

29%

Lunch Day-Part (11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.)

40%

Dinner Day-Part (4:00 p.m. to close)

31%

Our gift shops feature a variety of items inspired by our restaurant menu, such as cornbread mix, coffee, syrups, pancake mix and pies, as well as a broad selection of decorative and functional items, including rocking chairs, seasonal gifts, apparel, toys, cookware and various other gift items. We also offer an assortment of candies, preserves and other food items.

The following table highlights the five categories that accounted for the largest shares of our retail sales in 2026:

Percentage of

Retail Sales in

​ ​ ​

2026

Apparel and Accessories

32%

Food

19%

Toys

15%

Décor

12%

Bed & Bath

7%

At July 31, 2026, our gift shops featured approximately 3,100 stock keeping units (“SKUs”). Certain food items are sold under the “Cracker Barrel Old Country Store” brand name. We believe that we achieve high retail sales per square foot of retail selling space (approximately $432 per square foot in 2026) as compared to traditional retail stores both by offering appealing merchandise and by having a significant source of customers who are typically our restaurant guests.

Product Development and Merchandising: Our product development department develops new and improved menu items either in response to shifts in customer preferences or to create customer interest. We use a formal development and testing process, which includes guest research and in-store market tests to ensure products brought to market have a greater likelihood of meeting our goals. Menu-driven growth is built through three areas: enhancements to our current core menu offerings, the addition of new core menu offerings and limited time offer seasonal events or promotions.

Our merchandising department selects and develops products for our gift shop. We are focused on driving retail sales by converting those customers who come to us for a restaurant visit. Our assortment includes both core and seasonal themes. Our seasonal themes are designed to create interest and excitement in our stores by providing our guests with additional choices that vary throughout the year.

Store Management: At each store, our store management typically consists of one general manager, three to four associate managers and one retail manager. To motivate managers to improve sales and operational performance, we maintain bonus plans designed to provide managers with incentives to meet and exceed the operational targets of their store. Each store is assigned to both a restaurant and a retail district manager who each report to a regional vice president.

Purchasing and Distribution: We negotiate directly with food vendors as to specification, price and other material terms of most food purchases. We have a contract with an unaffiliated distributor with custom distribution centers in Lebanon, Tennessee; McKinney, Texas; Gainesville, Florida; Elkton, Maryland; Kendallville, Indiana; Rock Hill, South Carolina; and Shafter, California. We purchase the majority of our food products and restaurant supplies on a cost‑plus basis through this unaffiliated distributor. The distributor is responsible for placing food orders, warehousing and delivering food products to our stores. Deliveries are generally made once per week to individual stores. Produce is purchased through a national program and is delivered two to three times a week through a network of approximately fifty independent produce suppliers. Fluid dairy is delivered two to three times a week through approximately fifty regional dairies, the majority of which are under the ownership of two separate unaffiliated companies. Beer and wine are purchased and distributed through approximately 615 distributors with deliveries ranging from weekly to monthly.

The following table highlights the five food categories which accounted for the largest shares of our food purchasing expense in 2026:

Percentage of

Food Purchases

​ ​ ​

in 2026

Beef

17%

Fruits and vegetables

12%

Poultry

11%

Dairy (including eggs)

11%

Pork

10%

Each of these categories includes several individual items. Bacon is the single food item within these categories that accounted for the largest share of our food purchasing expense in 2026 at approximately 5% of total food purchases. Dairy, fruits and vegetables are purchased through numerous vendors, including local vendors. Eggs are purchased through six vendors. We purchase our pork through eight vendors, poultry through nine vendors and beef through five vendors. Should any food items from a particular vendor become unavailable, we generally believe that these food items could readily be obtained, or alternative products substituted, in sufficient quantities from other sources at competitive prices to allow us to avoid any material adverse effects that could be caused by such unavailability.

The majority of our retail items (approximately 80% in 2026) are processed through our retail distribution center in Lebanon, Tennessee. The retail distribution center processes orders generated by our automated replenishment system and typically ships retail products to individual stores on a weekly basis via two dedicated third-party freight lines. The remaining retail items are shipped directly to our stores by our vendors.

Approximately one-third of our 2026 retail items were purchased directly from vendors in the People’s Republic of China. We have relationships with several foreign buying agencies to source product, monitor quality control and supplement product development.

Information Technology: We believe that an essential part of pleasing people is established through our ability to leverage technology. We use technology to enhance the experiences of our guests and our employees, and to assist management in all aspects of operating the business. Examples include a digital experience that drives our loyalty program, effectively enables our to-go and catering business, allows for mobile payments in our stores, and provides guests with a digital waitlist that can be accessed remotely through our own mobile application. Our in-store guest experience is supported by systems that manage the dining room seating, assist in facilitating customer orders of food and retail products, and route food orders to our kitchen. Marketing uses digital technology to provide more relevancy in customer messaging. Our store employees use a range of systems to manage inventory, labor, forecasting and orders for retail and restaurants. In our distribution center, we manage retail merchandise planning, purchasing, warehousing, and distribution using various retail management solutions. Our data solutions provide management with daily reports used to operate stores in a cost-effective manner and assist in analytics and decision-making. Our Service Center leverages technology solutions that enable an efficient and effective way to resolve Technology, Human Resources, Operations, Facilities and other corporate concerns. We believe our technology is highly effective in supporting Cracker Barrel’s daily operations, and we continue to enhance this technology in line with our Company’s strategic vision.

Off-Premise Business: Approximately 20% of our restaurant sales are generated through our off-premise channels, which include Individual To Go, Third-Party Delivery and Catering and Occasion. Individual To Go are orders picked up directly by our guests from our stores. Third-Party Delivery are orders placed through aggregators such as DoorDash® and Uber Eats and delivered by their drivers. Catering and Occasion are offerings designed for large parties, including our popular Heat n’ Serve meals available during select holidays. In 2026, Individual To Go, Third-Party Delivery and Catering and Occasion accounted for approximately 50%, 30% and 20% of total off-premise sales, respectively.

Guest Satisfaction: We are committed to providing our guests a home-style, country-cooked meal, and a variety of retail merchandise served and sold with genuine hospitality in a comfortable environment. Our commitment to offering guests a quality experience begins with our employees. Our mission statement, “Pleasing People,” embraces guests and employees alike, and our employees are trained on the importance of that mission in a culture of mutual respect. We are also committed to staffing each store with an experienced management team to ensure attentive guest service and consistent food quality. Through the regular use of guest surveys and store visits by district managers and operational vice presidents, management receives valuable feedback that is used in our ongoing efforts to improve the stores and to demonstrate our continuing commitment to pleasing our guests. We have a guest-relations call center that takes comments and suggestions from guests and forwards them to operations or other management for information and follow up. We monitor operational performance and guest satisfaction at all stores on an ongoing basis. We have public notices in our menus, on our website and posted in our stores informing guests and employees about how to contact us by internet with questions, complaints or concerns regarding services or products. We conduct training on how to gather information and investigate and resolve guest concerns. This is accompanied by comprehensive training for all store employees on our public accommodations policy and commitment to “Pleasing People.”

Marketing: We employ multiple media channels to reach and engage our guests. Outdoor advertising (e.g., billboards and state department of transportation signs) is one of our largest advertising vehicles we use to reach our traveling and local guests. In 2026, we had over 1,300 billboards and this expenditure accounted for approximately one-fourth of our total advertising spend for the year. We continue to optimize our non-billboard advertising mix which includes television (increasingly digital), digital display and video, mobile, social media, and search marketing. Our digital marketing efforts have also expanded to focus on improving brand preference, guest engagement and sales. We have a presence on multiple social media sites and several food delivery apps, an e-commerce platform that integrates individual-to-go and catering shopping, and a customer relationship management (CRM) program that employs email, text messages, push notifications and personalization. Our event activations drive awareness for the brand and build cultural relevance and affinity with our guests. Our customer loyalty program, Cracker Barrel Rewards, provides us with an opportunity to increase consumer frequency and engagement.

Store Development: We opened two new Cracker Barrel stores and closed four Cracker Barrel stores in 2026. Currently, we do not plan on opening any new stores during 2027. As of September 11, 2026, approximately 84% of our stores are located along interstate highways. Our remaining stores are located off-interstate or near tourist destinations.

Of the 655 stores open as of September 11, 2026, we own the land and buildings for 330, while the other 325 properties are either ground leases or ground and building leases. Building, site improvement, furniture, equipment and related development costs for the stores opened in 2026 were approximately $7,000 and pre-opening costs averaged $611 per store in 2026.

Our current store prototype is approximately 8,900 square feet, including approximately 1,900 square feet of retail selling space and dining room seating for approximately 170 guests. Our capital investment in new stores may differ in the future due to changes in our store prototype, building design specifications, site location and site characteristics.

Maple Street Biscuit Company

We also previously operated Maple Street Biscuit Company (“MSBC”), a breakfast and lunch fast casual concept. During the fourth quarter of 2026, the Company sold 35 MSBC locations and closed the remaining Company-owned locations. As of July 31, 2026, we no longer operated any MSBC locations.

HUMAN CAPITAL

As of July 31, 2026, we employed approximately 74,500 people, of whom 360 were in advisory and supervisory capacities, 3,400 were in-store management positions and 46 were officers. Many store personnel are employed on a part-time basis. Our employees are not represented by any union, and management considers its employee relations to be good. People are at the core of our business and an essential part of our Company.

Employee Development / Training

Because of the importance of our employees’ ability to deliver the service levels that are a vital part of the hospitality that drives our brand appeal to guests, we emphasize employee development and continual training and education. To help ensure that individual stores operate at a high level of quality, we focus significant attention on the training of store managers. We believe that our training programs are key in developing our managers’ leadership skills and commitment to operational excellence, which we believe are important to delivering a positive employee and guest experience. We provide our managers and hourly employees with ongoing training through various development courses taught through a blended learning approach, including a mix of hands-on, traditional classroom, written and cloud-based training. Each store is equipped with dedicated training computers and cloud-based proprietary eLearning instruction programs.

Employee Benefits / Compensation

Cracker Barrel is committed to providing comprehensive and competitive benefits to meet our employees’ needs. We offer a robust set of benefits to help our employees and their families stay healthy and effectively manage spend related to health and financial well-being. These benefits include programs such as medical, dental, vision, prescription drug, and life insurance coverage, as well as short and long term disability insurance coverage. Additionally, Cracker Barrel is pleased to offer our Employee Assistance Program to all employees and family members. This confidential program is available 24/7 for personal or professional consultations for a variety of health and welfare issues of importance to our employees. In addition, we provide all our employees with access to paid parental leave and adoption benefits, a 401(k) savings plan, an employee discount policy at our Cracker Barrel stores, an employee stock purchase plan, and a competitive vacation policy.

Our compensation and performance evaluation systems are carefully designed to focus pay decisions on experience and performance to help ensure the Company retains a highly productive workforce to operate our business while providing a high level of service to our guests.

Quality Assurance and Food Safety

Cracker Barrel incorporates robust quality assurance and food safety processes to help ensure the safety of all our food and retail products delivered to our guests including the following:

● Comprehensive food safety training for store employees and store managers;

● Extensive requirements for food supplier approval;

● Ongoing third-party food safety audits of food production and distribution centers;

● Periodic food product audits conducted by Cracker Barrel quality assurance team;

● Rigid processes to ensure new or alternative source suppliers deliver food products to exact specifications;

● Third-party testing of retail non-food products to ensure compliance with all specifications and Federal regulations;

● Regular unannounced food safety audits conducted on all Cracker Barrel locations several times per year by a nationally recognized third party food safety organization;

● Maintaining a pest free environment in our locations through a stringent pest control process;

● Monitoring of all national and local food safety regulations pertaining to both food products and store operations;

● Monitoring of all health department inspections of all Cracker Barrel locations; and

● Monitoring and responding to:

o Food borne illness outbreaks,

o Food and product recalls, and

o Outbreaks of infectious disease.

GOVERNMENT REGULATION

We are subject to various federal, state and local laws affecting our business, including areas of food safety, minimum wage increases, health care, zoning requirements, preparation and sale, among others, of food and alcoholic beverages, information security, and environmental matters. Each of our stores must comply with licensing requirements and regulations by a number of governmental authorities and we have not been significantly affected by any delay in obtaining these licenses. Federal, state and local environmental laws and regulations have not historically had a significant impact on our operations; however, we cannot predict the effect of possible future environmental legislation or regulations on our operations.

TRADEMARKS

We deem the various Cracker Barrel trademarks and service marks that we own to be of substantial value. Our policy is to obtain federal registration of trademarks and other intellectual property whenever possible and to pursue vigorously any infringement of our trademarks and service marks.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

While research and development is important to us, these expenditures have not been material due to the nature of the restaurant and retail industries.

RAW MATERIALS SOURCES AND AVAILABILITY

Essential restaurant supplies and raw materials are generally available from a number of sources. Generally, we are not dependent upon single sources of supplies or raw materials. However, in our stores, certain branded items are single source products or product lines. Our ability to maintain consistent quality throughout our store system depends in part upon our ability to acquire food products and related items from reliable sources. When the supply of certain products is uncertain or prices are expected to rise significantly, we may enter into purchase contracts or purchase bulk quantities for future use.

Adequate alternative sources of supply, as well as the ability to adjust menus if needed, are believed to exist for substantially all of our restaurant products. Our retail supply chain generally involves longer lead-times and, often, more remote sources of product, including the People’s Republic of China, and most of our retail product is distributed to our stores through a single distribution center. Although disruption of our retail supply chain could be difficult to overcome, we continuously evaluate the potential for disruptions and ways to mitigate such disruptions should they occur.

COMPETITION

The restaurant and retail industries are intensely competitive with respect to the type and quality of food, retail merchandise, price, service, location, personnel, concept, attractiveness of facilities, availability of carryout and home delivery, internet and mobile ordering capabilities and effectiveness of advertising and marketing. We compete with a significant number of national and regional restaurant and retail chains, some of which have greater resources than us, as well as locally owned restaurants and retail stores. We also face growing competition from the supermarket industry, which offers “convenient meals” in the form of improved entrées and side dishes from the deli section; fast casual restaurants; quick-service restaurants; and casual and family dining restaurants. The prevalence of highly promotional business strategies and improving product offerings at these competitors, along with the continued expansion of home delivery services, together with negative economic conditions, could cause consumers to choose other, potentially less expensive alternatives to dining with us. We expect competition to continue in all of these areas. The restaurant and retail businesses are also often affected by changes in consumer taste and preference; national, regional or local economic conditions; demographic trends; traffic and weather patterns; the type, number and location of competing restaurants and retailers; and consumers’ discretionary purchasing power. Factors such as inflation, increased food, labor and benefits costs and the lack of experienced management and hourly employees may adversely affect the restaurant and retail industries in general and our stores in particular. We believe we compete effectively and have successfully differentiated ourselves from many of our competitors in the restaurant and retail industries through a unique brand and guest experience, which offers a diversified full-service menu and a large variety of nostalgic and unique retail items. For further information regarding competition, see