Cracker Barrel over the past decade has worked closely with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), changing its company culture to be more inclusive and LGBT-friendly ahead of its controversial store rebrand.
The restaurant chain’s former management and training leader, Steve Smotherman, who spearheaded an LGBT employee resource group at Cracker Barrel, went on to sit on the HRC’s Business Advisory Council, Upward News reported.
“For more than ten years of my time at Cracker Barrel, I had an emphasis on Diversity & Inclusion, especially with LGBTQ workplace inclusion. My training background allowed me to understand the steps of adult learning, facilitate difficult conversations and be effective at it [sic] Diversity & Inclusion content,” Smotherman, who joined the company in 2005, wrote.
Smotherman said at first he was reluctant to join Cracker Barrel due to it having a bad reputation with the gay community. In 1991, the chain instituted a corporate-wide policy stating that any employee who failed to demonstrate “normal heterosexual values” would be fired. After 11 employees were fired due to their sexual orientation, protests and boycotts were staged throughout the country.
After a few years with the restaurant, Smotherman founded an LGBT resource group that originally had six members. Over time, the group was successful at changing Cracker Barrel’s culture and making the “Old Country Store” more welcoming towards LGBT employees, Smotherman said. He left the company in 2020. The former Cracker Barrel employee would go on to sit on the HRC Business Advisory Council.
