Cracker Barrel (CBRL) FY2026 10-K: Traffic Down 7.6% After the Logo, and the Profit Was One-Offs
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The Hook
Cracker Barrel Old Country Store $CBRL reported $31.7M of net income for fiscal 2026. Four one-time items added $122.5M to the year: a $47.4M gain from selling 26 of its own restaurants and leasing them back, a $47.4M check from settling a credit-card interchange fee lawsuit, $15.0M of tariff refunds, and $12.6M of settlements from its poultry and pork suppliers. Together they are almost four times the profit the company reported.
The operating line tells the plainer story. Operating income went from +$55.0M in fiscal 2025 to -$12.5M in fiscal 2026, and that is after the sale-leaseback gain, which sits inside it. Comparable restaurant guest traffic fell 7.6%. The 10-K names the cause itself: the company "faced challenges related to negative publicity from brand initiatives... including the launch of a new logo and modern test store remodels," and it reversed both inside the first quarter. The logo lasted days. The lost guests lasted the year.
Company Snapshot
Cracker Barrel runs 655 restaurants with attached gift shops, almost all along US interstates, selling country cooking to travelers and locals and rocking chairs, candy and seasonal goods on the way out. Retail is 18.6% of revenue. None of the stores are franchised.
This analysis covers the FY2026 Form 10-K, filed September 25, 2026, for the 52-week year ended July 31, 2026. The fiscal year ends on the Friday nearest July 31, so fiscal 2026 ran from August 2025, the month of the logo change, through July 2026. It is the first full year the rebrand touched.
The company ended the year smaller and simpler. It sold 35 Maple Street Biscuit Company locations on July 20, 2026 and closed the other 16 the same day, leaving Cracker Barrel as its only brand. David Deno, previously CEO of Bloomin' Brands, replaced Julie Masino as CEO on August 10, 2026.
The Financial Story
Traffic did the damage, and pricing only partly covered it. Revenue fell 4.7% to $3.319B. Comparable restaurant sales fell 4.2% because guest traffic, which Cracker Barrel measures as entrees sold, fell 7.6% while the average check rose 3.7%, 4.3 points of it from menu price increases. Traffic was already down 3.0% in fiscal 2025, before the rebrand, and the filing blames the fiscal 2026 decline on both the publicity and "lower consumer demand arising from multiple macroeconomic factors." The honest reading is a slow leak that the logo turned into a flood. Across the two years, roughly one entree in ten that Cracker Barrel sold in fiscal 2024 is gone.
| FY2026 | FY2025 | |
|---|---|---|
| Total revenue | $3.319B | $3.484B |
| Comparable restaurant sales | -4.2% | +3.5% |
| Comparable retail sales | -5.2% | -1.3% |
| Average check | +3.7% | +6.5% |
| Comparable guest traffic | -7.6% | -3.0% |
| Operating income (loss) | -$12.5M | $55.0M |
| Net income | $31.7M | $46.4M |
| Diluted EPS | $1.40 | $2.06 |
A restaurant with fewer guests has the same kitchen. Labor rose from 36.0% to 37.3% of revenue and other store operating expenses from 24.6% to 25.5%, which the filing attributes to lower productivity and deleverage on falling sales. The company's own adjusted EBITDA, from its fourth-quarter release, fell from $224.3M to $147.7M, down 34%, and the margin from 6.4% to 4.5%.
Now the four windfalls. None of them came from serving a meal:
| One-time item (FY2026) | Amount | Where it sits |
|---|---|---|
| Gain on sale and leaseback of 26 stores | $47.4M | operating income |
| Interchange fee litigation settlement | $47.4M | below operating income |
| Tariff refunds | $15.0M | retail cost of goods sold |
| Poultry and pork supplier settlements | $12.6M | store operating expenses |
| Total | $122.5M |
The first two are the same size by coincidence, $47,421K and $47,422K. They are unrelated. The year also carried a $27.0M loss on the Maple Street sale and $31.2M of impairment and store closing costs, up from $20.1M the year before, an increase the filing ties mainly to the Maple Street exit. Remove the four windfalls from the $20.6M of pre-tax income and add back both charges in full, and the continuing business lost roughly $44M before tax. That is the generous version: impairment and closing costs ran $20M or more in each of the prior two years too, so not all of it is a one-time exit cost. A tax benefit of $11.1M, a -54.0% effective rate driven by tax credits on a thin pre-tax base, then lifted net income further.
This is a profitability story, not a solvency story. Operating cash flow was $206.2M and capex was cut from $159.1M to $117.8M. Total debt fell from $484.6M to $337.2M because the company repaid the last $150.0M of its 2026 convertible notes at maturity on June 15, 2026. The dividend held at about $23.1M. The caveat is that roughly $75M of that operating cash flow came from the lawsuit, tariff and supplier receipts, and none of those repeats. Strip them out, before any tax effect, and free cash flow after capex would have been near $13M, below the dividend.
The sale-leaseback is the part most readers will skip. On July 17, 2026 Cracker Barrel sold 26 stores for $77.4M, net of closing costs, and leased them back for 20 years at about $5.7M a year, with fixed annual increases and renewal options up to 40 more years. It is the fourth time the company has done this: 15 stores and the retail distribution center in 2009, 64 stores in 2020, 62 in 2021, and now 26. The gain is booked once. The rent is paid for two decades, and it lands in the same operating expenses that just deleveraged. Operating lease liabilities now total $698.8M, twice the funded debt.
Valuation: What It Is Worth as a Normal Business
Cracker Barrel closed at $51.81 on September 25, 2026, a market capitalization of about $1.16B on 22.35M shares, per stockanalysis.com. The stock has more than doubled from its 52-week low of $24.85 and sits below its high of $60.26. The same source puts the analyst consensus at Hold across nine analysts with an average target of $49.71. The dividend is $1.00 a share a year, about a 1.9% yield.
Add $337.2M of debt and subtract $36.5M of cash and enterprise value is roughly $1.46B. That is about 9.9 times fiscal 2026 adjusted EBITDA and 7.7 times the midpoint of management's fiscal 2027 guidance of $180-200M. Lease liabilities are left out on purpose: rent already sits above the EBITDA line, so adding the leases to enterprise value would count the same cost twice.
Scenarios, using adjusted EBITDA times a stated multiple, less $300.7M of net debt, over 22.35M shares:
| Scenario | FY2027 adj. EBITDA | EV multiple | Implied value per share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bear: traffic stays negative, guide missed | $160M | 6.5x | about $33 |
| Base: guidance midpoint delivered | $190M | 7.5x | about $50 |
| Bull: comps at the top of +3-5%, guide beaten | $210M | 8.5x | about $66 |
A cash check points the same way. The guidance midpoint of $190M, less capex at the $117.5M midpoint and about $14M of interest, leaves roughly $58M, a free cash flow yield near 5% on today's market value before working capital and taxes. The company guides to a small tax benefit of $4-8M in fiscal 2027, so taxes will not eat it.
The market is paying for the base case: a recovery to the guidance midpoint, not beyond it. Implied value under stated assumptions, not a price target and not investment advice.
Risks
The guide is measured against a collapsed base, and it needs traffic to turn, not just to fall less. Fourth-quarter comparable restaurant sales fell 2.1% on revenue of $849.3M, per the company's release, and Investing.com's coverage of the call put Q4 traffic down 6.1%: better than the full year, still negative. The value offers the company is leaning on (a $7.99 breakfast and $8.99 early-dine deals, per Benzinga) trade check for traffic. Commodity inflation is guided to about 3.0% and hourly wages to 2.5-3.0%, cost pressure that has to be absorbed without the kind of menu pricing that helped push guests away.
The balance sheet is fine but the lease base is not small. $698.8M of operating lease liabilities and a weighted-average remaining lease term of 15.2 years are fixed costs against a variable guest count. The $345M of 1.75% convertible notes due 2030 convert at about $72 a share, well above today's price. The filing also discloses $4.1M of proxy contest costs in fiscal 2026 for a second straight contested annual meeting, and management is new.
The Bottom Line
Cracker Barrel did not have a cash problem in fiscal 2026. It had a guest problem, and it papered the income statement with a building sale, a lawsuit check, tariff refunds and supplier settlements that together outweighed its reported profit almost four to one. The logo is gone, Maple Street is gone and the CEO is new, which leaves one question the next four 10-Qs will answer: does comparable guest traffic turn positive against the easiest comparison the company will ever get? If it does, fiscal 2027 adjusted EBITDA of $180-200M is credible and the stock is roughly fairly priced. If traffic stays negative, the lever it keeps reaching for is its real estate: it still owns the land and buildings under 330 of its 655 stores, and this was its fourth sale-leaseback.
No analyst wrote this. Every figure came out of Cracker Barrel's own 10-K, read straight from its XBRL, and the same pipeline reads any company that files, or any private company that reports its books in the same format.
Every figure above comes from Cracker Barrel's FY2026 Form 10-K (accession 0001104659-26-110772, filed September 25, 2026) read directly from its XBRL, except the adjusted EBITDA, fourth-quarter results and fiscal 2027 outlook (the company's Q4 release, 8-K exhibit 99.1), Q4 traffic (Investing.com), promotions (Benzinga) and the market price, market capitalization and analyst consensus (stockanalysis.com, September 25, 2026), which are attributed inline. Filing data via RoboSystems.