How American restaurant brands are balancing nostalgia and modernisation

When the logo redesign of a 56-year-old American restaurant brand, Cracker Barrel, sparked cultural controversy that prompted a rebrand reversal in one week this summer, the conversation reached beyond aesthetics. Lisa Battles explores how agencies are helping other legacy fast and fast-casual brands evolve to attract new customers while retaining their core audiences.

Cracker Barrel’s new logo dropped the character of an older man in overalls, seated in a ladderback chair and leaning one arm on a wooden barrel. According to the company’s blog, a Tennessee designer created the logo in 1977 to “create a feeling of nostalgia.” Indeed, in the restaurant’s earlier days, when it was founded in Tennessee and throughout the Southern United States, it was a familiar sight to see old men in overalls socialising around on the porches of rural stores.

The Southern general store vibe carries throughout the restaurants, where a country store filled with retro gifts and goodies meets customers before they enter dining rooms with walls decorated with rustic signs and other antiques.

While the rebrand also included plans to remodel those spaces to reflect more modern country interior design, after the backlash, the company put the whole thing on the old country stove’s back burner before proverbially throwing it into one of its iconic dining room fireplaces.

The outrage revealed how loaded it can be to refresh a legacy brand to appeal to modern expectations, or at least for those so deeply rooted in nostalgia.

Established brand, Saucy offshoot

An exceptionally bold example comes from Cracker Barrel’s Kentucky neighbour, Yum! Brands, in Saucy, a new KFC spin-off restaurant developed by Yum!’s internal Collider Lab in collaboration with a few external vendors, including Rowe, a full-service design agency based in Columbus, Ohio. The project took the ‘Grand Prix’ award along with six Golds and one Silver at the Transform Awards North America in New York in October 2025.

While it is an offshoot of the 73-year-old KFC, Saucy is a new concept that began in late 2023, when Yum! leadership tasked chief new concept officer Christophe Poirer to form a team within Collider. The ask was to create a sub-concept that would do two things: appeal to young consumers and serve them in under four minutes.

Backed with over a decade of research and intensive brainstorming and collaboration, Saucy grew from concept to launch in nine months. The first location opened in December 2024 in Orlando, Florida.

The menu focuses on chicken tenders with 11 sauce options, a nod to KFC’s iconic 11 herbs and spices. Inside, familiar stripes wink to KFC, although the dominant vibe revolves around a bright magenta hue, lots of glass and a logo and light fixtures evocative of dripping sauce.

The classic KFC tagline, “Finger Lickin’ Good,” even drips, becoming “Finger Lickin’ Goooood.” More fun with the verbal identity: the tenders are “tendies” (an early idea for the name), sandwiches are “sammies” and new beignet-style treats are “puffies.”

Chronological and generational considerations

“We were given a clear brief from day one, and that consistency made the aggressive timeline possible,” says Andreina Vincentelli, Rowe’s chief experience officer. “It was very partner-led, and we were fortunate in this case to be able to go as fast as they wanted. They were very receptive to all of our ideas and gave us freedom.”

Rowe chief creative officer Dante Romano says that while their team kept top-of-mind the directive to appeal to younger generations, they zoomed out to consider that nearly all consumers have different expectations now.

“Every consumer is looking for a unique, fun experience. We don’t want to shut doors or turn off other generations,” says Romano. “There is a holistic approach to how we've designed Saucy that’s very different than what you would typically see in the fast-food industry.”

With a rich depth of experience and generations on their team, Vincentelli says there is no hierarchy with creativity and input, and everyone has a place at the table. They pulled heavily from influencer culture and looked beyond the restaurant industry for inspiration, including beauty brands.

“We are nodding back to the heritage with some of the striping motif, and extending the ‘Finger Lickin’ Good’ tagline more typographically to be funky and modern. It was a lot of fun from a communication perspective,” Romano says. “KFC is on the building, albeit small. And if you look close enough, you can kind of see some of the heritage moments come through. There are these beautiful little design details that inherently are in the world of KFC, but we've remixed them to this new modern era.”

The first location has been well-received, and the company plans to open at least a dozen locations in other parts of Florida in the coming months, according to National Restaurant News.

From facelifts to full sensory experiences

For decades, restaurant rebrands were largely aesthetic, even when new visual identities extended into remodels. Customers today expect more to draw them into dining rooms over ordering delivery, seeking multisensory experiences while preserving the basics of good food, service, affordability and convenience.

Within those expectations, there’s a huge opportunity for restaurant brands. According to a late 2024 study by brand strategy and retail design firm ChangeUp, three out of four people value the restaurant experience over price and convenience.

In its 2025 Experience Report released in October, ChangeUp offers a ranking of the top 50 retail and restaurant brands that resonate with customers, based on insights from 6,000 consumers, 300,000 data points and AI-powered sentiment analysis. Citing “a year of reckoning for retail and restaurant brands with higher labour costs, volatile tariffs and steady price increases,” the report states that consumers are especially discerning about where to dine out, if at all.

Of the nine restaurant brands that made the list, In-N-Out Burger and Texas Roadhouse were the only two to crack the top 20.

The takeaway? To shape the future beyond mere survival, restaurant brands must focus on how they make people feel. When a brand changes, the aim is to show audiences a difference without feeling distance, managing the tension between comfort and curiosity and mitigating the risks of alienation and irrelevance.

This delicate balancing act should begin with listening and casting a wide net while doing so, says ChangeUp creative director Marty McCauley.

“Listen to people who know the brand, from franchisees to corporate teams to customers. A brand transformation has to start with strategy. With customers, it’s critical to understand what both loyal and new guests are looking for. The challenge is also to tap into the pulse of what’s happening in restaurants, retail and hospitality, and then use your experience, observations and insights to develop a design solution that unites all stakeholders and cuts through the noise to deliver the brand with resonant clarity,” McCauley says.

Modernising a sandwich giant

Meanwhile, US-based sandwich chain Subway’s origin story goes back to 1965, and 60 years later, the company rolled out its Fresh Forward 2.0 refresh to 37,000-plus locations worldwide. ChangeUp partnered on the project to bring vibrant decor and bold graphics alongside other elements that appeal to human senses and emotion, including localised messages, elevated lighting and warmer wood tones.

As part of the refresh, customers experienced new technology as the company tested integrations of self-serve kiosks and order-ready screens while team members worked with new kitchen display screens.

“For larger brands, conducting research and building space for testing throughout the creative process helps determine whether new technology is feasible or risks alienating core customers. Dynamic, well-positioned brands earn the freedom to think bigger and explore unexpected technologies, design expressions and formats,” McCauley says. “Brands also must establish changes and integrate testing across their internal culture so that the new experience is reflected in how guests are served.”

Dreaming up new concepts

McCauley says while it’s impossible to name a favourite refresh project in the restaurant space, a recent “dream project” has been developing a new concept from scratch for Worthwyld, which opened in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in October of 2025. The restaurant marks the first venture into the restaurant space for European Wax Center co-founder David Coba.

Worthwyld’s all-day dining concept aims to set a new standard by aligning the speed and flexibility customers expect from fast-casual options with elevated aspects of fine dining, including made-to-order dishes of fresh ingredients, a warm atmosphere and attentive hospitality.

Guests may personalise their experiences, opting for traditional table-side service or using integrated technology like QR codes for ordering and payment. There are call buttons for assistance, as well. Minimalism meets natural warmth in the 4,500-square-feet of indoor and outdoor spaces, accommodating 190 guests amid geometric lines that mirror the brand’s visual identity, all softened with lush greenery.

“Starting a brand from scratch offered the freedom to dream big from the very beginning. Worthwyld gave ChangeUp the chance to seamlessly integrate strategy, naming, identity and environmental design. There was no history to reference and no established voice, name or visual identity, only a strong idea: to bring elevated food made with ‘no compromises’ to a restaurant that embodies the same principle. The team set aside traditional processes and embraced the unknown, unlocking the full promise of possibility,” McCauley says.