Last week, the popular restaurant chain Cracker Barrel revealed its new logo as part of a “rebranding” of yet another familiar staple of American cuisine. The color scheme and font remained relatively unchanged, but the grandfatherly gentleman seated in a rocking chair next to the namesake barrel went the way of Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemimah, who now reside only in the memory of American consumers. Perhaps the image consultants were afraid he might be thought of as “cousin cracker.”
The reaction was swift and visceral. Millions of dollars in lost shareholder value, combined with relentless mocking on social media, prompted a half-hearted word salad of an “apology,” but eventually the logo was restored. It remains to be seen if this move will result in a long-term dramatic misfortune as other tone-deaf detours into woke virtue signaling like Bud Light, Target, and Jaguar. Still, American consumers might understandably be asking themselves if the C-suites will ever learn. Two recent developments give hope that the answer is “yes.”
Bank of America updated its code of conduct to provide new protections against discriminatory debanking based on religion and political viewpoints or affiliations. In an increasingly global economy, access to the free market is essential to human flourishing and should never be conditioned on religious or political ideology.
The policy change by one of the nation’s largest banks comes on the heels of President Trump’s executive order on debanking and after two years of engagement by Alliance Defending Freedom along with partners in the private and public sectors to advocate for this policy shift. Given Bank of America’s disturbing track record of debanking religious clients like U.S.-based Indigenous Advance Ministries, its LLC that employs Ugandans, and a domestic church based in Memphis, and Timothy Two Project International, this represents a major step in the right direction.
In addition to Bank of America, another major American company signaled to consumers a willingness to honor the fiduciary responsibility to shareholders as a priority over political correctness. Costco, despite pressure from abortion activist groups, recently told ADF and Inspire Investing and reiterated publicly that it will not seek certification to stock mifepristone in any of its retail pharmacies.
The drug is part of a two-drug regimen for “chemical abortion.” Regardless of public opinion on the issue of abortion in general, mifepristone is demonstrably dangerous to women, as the research by the Ethics and Public Policy Center reports. Retail pharmacies undermine their mission of serving the health and wellness of their customers by offering drugs as dangerous as mifepristone.
ADF’s shareholder coalition, collaborating with other like-minded partners like Inspire Investing and public officials like state financial officers, encouraged Costco last summer to set politics aside and make a clear-eyed business assessment in response to a letter from then New York City Comptroller Brad Landers who urged Costco and others “to immediately” get certified to dispense mifepristone and compared its safety profile to ibuprofen. ADF and Inspire followed up with Costco this summer, which prompted the most recent announcement.
Retailers like Costco have built their customer base and reputation on selling a lifetime of purchases to families, both large and small. They have nothing to gain and much to lose by becoming abortion dispensaries.
These decisions by Bank of America and Costco represent a growing trend in corporate America—a welcome return to the telos of business.
These “wins” are the latest in a series of over twenty-five policy and behavior changes at major corporations from ADF’s coalition of like-minded shareholder advocates in the past year. JPMorgan Chase recently enacted a major policy change to prevent future discriminatory de-banking thanks to ADF and Bowyer Research, while the ADF-supported shareholder coalition has made substantive progress at many other companies including Walmart, Verizon, and Morgan Stanley.
IBM, PepsiCo, Mastercard, and Johnson & Johnson made changes to their advertising policies after cutting ties with the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). Comcast also made major changes to its ad-selling policies that will protect religious and political views in advertisements at NBC Universal and Peacock, which are worth over $100 billion dollars together. Overall, ADF’s coalition has filed seventy-four shareholder proposals at major corporations, resulting in more than seventy policy-related meetings with representatives of forty-five companies.
A change in logo from a restaurant chain like Cracker Barrel, which specializes in comfort food, might seem trivial in the grand scheme of world events, but the emerging trend of American businesses getting back to business and depoliticizing a considerable aspect of American life is as comforting as gravy on a biscuit.
Lathan Watts is vice-president of public affairs at Alliance Defending Freedom and its sister organization ADF Action.