Cracker Barrel Old Country Store](https://www.crackerbarrel.com) is refreshing its menu starting Aug. 18 with a six-item Crispy Homestyle Chicken expansion anchored at $9.99, a price point the Lebanon, Tenn.-based chain is using to compete for family dinner traffic during the typically high-traffic fall season. The limited-time program runs through Oct. 18 at participating locations across its roughly 660-unit footprint spanning 43 states.
The Chicken Build-Out
The core offer positions two entry-level formats — a two-side entrée and a sandwich — at $9.99 each, both built on hand-breaded chicken served with buttermilk biscuits or corn muffins. Above that, the chain is introducing four new premium builds: two "Loaded" variants topped with bacon, Colby cheese and sauces (Maple Bacon and BBQ Smokestack), and two "Sauced" versions (Nashville Hot and Honey Butter). The tiered structure follows a well-established casual-dining playbook of using a value anchor to drive trial while upselling guests toward higher-margin topped preparations.
Chief Marketing Officer Sarah Moore framed the push around household scheduling pressure. "Fall can feel like a sprint for families," Moore said. "We want Cracker Barrel to make that a little easier, with food everyone can get excited about, value families can feel good about."
Breakfast and Seasonal Beverage Extensions
The seasonal program also extends into breakfast — historically one of Cracker Barrel's highest-frequency dayparts. Two new apple-forward items, Sweet Cream Caramel Apple Pancakes and Sweet Cream Caramel Apple French Toast, join the roster, each plated with fried cinnamon apples, caramel drizzle and vanilla cream sauce alongside eggs and a protein. On the beverage side, the returning Granny Smith Apple Tea and Granny Smith Apple Mimosa are joined by a new Sweet Honey Latte, broadening the seasonal attach opportunity at the check level. Dessert additions include a new Apple Cobbler Cheesecake and the returning Carrot Cake.
For casual-dining operators, the breakfast-for-dinner positioning Cracker Barrel is actively promoting reflects a category-wide effort to extend morning daypart occasions into evening slots, where traffic has historically been harder to hold against fast-casual competition. As explored in F&B Industry News' coverage of casual dining traffic trends, operators with strong breakfast identities have increasingly leaned into all-day breakfast as a traffic-building lever.
Kids' Promotion and Retail Tie-In
Running Aug. 18 through Sept. 7, Cracker Barrel is reviving its Free Kids Toy promotion, offering one of six collectible B'loonie Petz squishy toys with the dine-in purchase of an adult entrée and a Kid's Meal on the same check. The promotion is capped at six toy redemptions per check and carries a maximum discount of $30. Guests who opt out of the toy can instead receive $5 off a select retail toy from the Old Country Store, a mechanic that reinforces the dual restaurant-retail model that distinguishes Cracker Barrel from most full-service peers.
The retail integration is a structural advantage the company has long leveraged: in-store merchandise sales provide a secondary revenue stream and extend dwell time, a dynamic covered in depth in F&B Industry News' analysis of restaurant-retail hybrid operators. Linking the toy incentive to the retail floor — rather than making the giveaway entirely self-contained — keeps that cross-sell mechanism active even when guests choose the discount over the free item.
The fall seasonal push arrives as Cracker Barrel continues efforts to rebuild traffic and sharpen its value message following a period of strategic repositioning. The $9.99 entry price on the chicken program signals deliberate attention to check sensitivity in a consumer environment where casual-dining frequency remains under pressure from both fast-casual alternatives and at-home meal preparation.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
