Cracker Barrel 2010 Annual Report Download - page 15

A beer product mix in the core categories – apparel,
seasonal and toys – is an important part of the strategy to grow
retail sales at a faster pace. Guest feedback in 2010 clearly
showed that our products had more appeal than in the past.
In apparel, the men’s military t-shirts were popular, as were the
bags, hats and jewelry oered for women. Our guests like to
experience the changing of the seasons. ey enjoy Halloween
products as Autumn approaches, followed by our Christmas
oerings, and garden accessories in the Spring, with a patriotic
theme over the Summer. Every child, young and old, heads
to the toy corner to see what’s new. e musical toys such as
the Magic Fiddle, harmonica, and the electronic drum sticks
are examples of our most popular items.
Many of our guests like the Cracker Barrel restaurant
experience so much that they want to take it home with
them. We currently oer over twenty-ve Cracker Barrel-
branded food items. is includes many of the same
items that are served at our table – regular and decaeinated
coees, pancake mix, and fried apples – plus mint and
gum tins in a number of avors, peanut brile and spicy and
natural apple buer. Regional products provide the oppor-
tunity for the traveler to nd something unique at every
Cracker Barrel location. For example, we oer peanuts in
Virginia, plush black bears in the Smokey Mountains, books
on Elvis in West Tennessee and local collegiate merchan-
dise prey much everywhere.
We’re making real progress in creating a beer retail
experience, and the proof is seen in higher guest satisfaction
scores. We know that it takes more than just a beer product
selection. It also takes more training on information about
the products so that employees are knowledgeable as they help
guests, and it takes improved visual merchandising and a
beer system for geing the right product to the right store
at the right time.
rough all these strategies, we believe we can show
consistent growth in our retail business. Retail sales
accounted for almost 24 percent of total sales six years ago.
In 2010 retail sales, as a percent of total sales, were
20.5 percent. We are striving and intend to achieve that
higher level again.
Building Upon Our Lead
Over the past few years, we have focused on strengthening
the value of the Cracker Barrel brand. All of the brand
initiatives are foundational improvements. Now it’s time to
build upon our underlying strength in order to expand
our share of the full-service restaurant industry. We can
accomplish this by generating higher sales per store and then
by gradually increasing the rate at which we open new stores.
Once you have a successful operating model, you grow by
building more restaurants. Adding new units, however, does
not guarantee higher growth or protability, as recent industry
conditions have proven. Timing is important. We made a
conscious decision a few years back to dramatically slow our
pace of opening new stores. In fact, in 2010, we reached our
lowest level of new store openings since 1986, opening only six
new locations. at’s roughly a one percent unit growth rate.
It’s going to take some time to ramp up new store development
but we plan to do so because we see this as a key strategy for
accelerating our earnings growth. For the coming scal year, we
plan to open 11 new stores. at represents a growth rate
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