A black waitress at a Cracker Barrel in Tennessee has claimed that her white coworkers repeatedly made bigoted statements toward her that were allegedly ignored by upper management.
Roberta Mendez said in a federal lawsuit that she was regularly called the n-word, a ‘burnt biscuit’, a ‘monkey’ and a ‘b**ch’, according to the August 21 lawsuit.
Her shift leader allegedly told her ‘I don’t like black people’ as recently as August 2024, the lawsuit said.
Mendez, who started as a server at the Nashville-area Cracker Barrel in 2015, argued in the complaint that her white colleagues were treated better than her even though she always ‘met or exceeded’ expectations at work.
The lawsuit also alleged that Mendez was ‘physically pushed and hit’ and that management ‘segregated its Black workers from its Caucasian workers’.
Mendez said she reported all of this to her managers, assistant managers and the general manager, Jack Kinle.
‘Kinle retaliated against Mendez and wrote Mendez up in 2023. When Mendez escalated her concerns to Human Resources, she was only told not to sign the write-up. No remedial action was taken regarding her complaint,’ the lawsuit said.
In August 2024, Mendez submitted a complaint to human resources about the alleged mistreatment of her and her fellow black employees, according to the complaint.
Roberta Mendez brought a lawsuit against Cracker Barrel in federal court on August 21 and claimed her superiors did nothing while her coworkers called her horrible racial epithets
A month later, on September 28, she was fired and was told it was because she broke company policy.
Kyle Biesecker, the attorney representing Mendez in the case, told The Independent that his client’s suit spoke for itself.
‘Next, Cracker Barrel will file their answer to the complaint and discovery will proceed from there,’ Biesecker said. ‘We expect depositions to bear out many of the facts as alleged by Ms. Mendez.’
Mendez is demanding to be reinstated to her position at the restaurant and be awarded all her lost compensation since being terminated.
The lawsuit comes on the heels off the PR disaster sparked by Cracker Barrel changing its logo and transforming its brand identity from an old-fashioned country store serving hearty meals to a more modern establishment.
The controversy began on August 19 when the chain debuted the new logo for the first time in 48 years. The redesign removed the image of an old man leaning against a barrel and left just the name in a new, minimalist font.
It also eliminated the pinto bean shape behind the name, a nod to one of the original side dishes offered when Cracker Barrel first opened in 1969.
Critics said the changes stripped away the brand’s character and charm, and the backlash cost the company nearly $100 million in a single week.
Pictured: The new Cracker Barrel logo is seen on a menu in a restaurant in Pembroke Pines, Florida, on August 21
Even as the backlash raged on, CEO Julie Felss Masino insisted in an August 21 Good Morning America interview that ‘people like what we’re doing’
Even as the backlash raged on, CEO Julie Felss Masino insisted in an August 21 Good Morning America interview that ‘people like what we’re doing’.
‘Cracker Barrel needs to feel like the Cracker Barrel for today and for tomorrow — the things that you love are still there. We need people to choose us, and we want people to choose us,’ Masino said.
She added that the top question Florida-based managers asked her during a recent meeting was ‘How can I get a remodel, when can I get a remodel and how do I get on the list?’
The confidence in the rebrand lasted until August 26, when Cracker Barrel backpedaled and announced that they would return to its old logo.
‘We thank our guests for sharing your voices and love for Cracker Barrel. We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our ‘old timer’ will remain,’ the company said.
Shares popped as much as 2.3 percent that trading session but have since come back down about the same amount in subsequent days.
