Have you ever wondered where Cracker Barrel gets all the great antiques that you see on the walls in their restaurants? I’m Emma, an art director at Country Living. Come along with me to peek inside Cracker Barrel’s decor warehouse.
Watch the Tour:
Standing on the outside of this building, you’d never guess all the incredible items stored inside. I met with Joe Stewart, the decor manager who handles all of their inventory. He told me Cracker Barrel opened this warehouse around 1985 with 15,000 square feet to fill.
In 1991, they added another 10,000 square feet to accommodate the massive collection.
From stacks of dishes to rival your grandmother’s cabinet, to colorful cans, to wooden clocks. From stacks of saddles to oars galore. From rows of keys to seed packets to Country Charm Barbie. There are ducks. There are record players. There are instruments. Pretty much anything you can think of—they’ve found it.
Often, they buy in bulk, which is how they’ve quickly filled this place from floor to ceiling. Joe tells me they source from all over, including beloved antique fairs like Brimfield and Round Top.
So how do they keep track of all of it?
Joe himself created their barcode system that tags every single item in their inventory, including items currently on display in your local Cracker Barrel. He estimates they currently have 110,000 barcodes, all searchable in a central database, which is seriously impressive.
We at Country Living love a gigantic vintage sign, so I was drawn to this particular aisle with tons of colorful advertisements and road signs. Again, this gets back to buying in bulk. Often they buy multiples of the same sign since they’ll be displayed in different restaurants. Joe estimates the highest-value item in their inventory is this Coca-Cola sign.
Since a lot of their collection includes tiny items that can’t easily stand alone, they bundle them together into shadow boxes to display in restaurants. To accomplish this, they have a workshop right in the middle of the warehouse to build all these custom frames, and often they even build them from salvaged wood.
It was so much fun to spend part of my day rummaging through antiques and talking to Joe about his unique job.
I’ve eaten in many a Cracker Barrel, so I love to see all the work that goes into creating just the right setting for those meals with sometimes quirky and surprising decor. Thanks to the Cracker Barrel team for giving me a peek and trusting me not to break anything. Luckily, I didn’t.
