As you may be aware, our family recently moved to the Lebanon, TN area. If you're not aware, Lebanon is home to the headquarters of one of my favorite restaurants, Cracker Barrel. It's one of the places we usually stop to eat at least once during a family road trip, if not multiple times, much to the chagrin of my son.
Given my love for Cracker Barrel, I've driven past their HQ campus and it's a beautiful piece of property and building. What I wasn't sure about until this evening is where exactly the original store was actually located. I was certain it was probably somewhere in Lebanon, but I doubted it was the current location on US-231 just north of I-40. There's a building with a similar facade across the street from their headquarters so I figured maybe that was it, but given it's non-prime location anymore, they shut it down and moved it. Then there's another building off another street in Lebanon that has a similar front so I thought it might be there.
Well, I found out this evening exactly where the original store was located. And, very surprising to me it's not been maintained by the corporation as a running restaurant or maintained in any way whatsoever. In fact, it's in some serious disrepair.
The original store was located on Highway 109, just north of I-40 around the Leeville Pike and East Division cross streets. I've driven by it now multiple times per week for the last few months since we've lived here and I would have never picked it out as being a Cracker Barrel restaurant in a past-life, much less THE ORIGINAL! I can't believe this building wasn't maintained. I would think this location would be a prime location again to have a working restaurant of some sort. It's sad that it's been left in this type of condition for so many years.
What do you think? Is this just the way things go? Or should something be done to reclaim and highlight this treasure for the open-road?
The original Cracker Barrel building looked to be finding a new and restored life at the Wilson County Fairgrounds Fiddler’s Grove (https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/wilson/2019/07/17/cracker-barrel-old-country-store-first-location-lebanon-tennessee-moved/1744861001/). Alas, the building has been ignored for too long and sadly is too far gone to effectively and affordably be restored as planned. Pieces will be kept and preserved while other parts will be scrapped and used for employee recognition and other artifacts (https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/wilson/2019/08/04/original-cracker-barrel-no-longer-restored-wilson-county-fairgrounds/1914835001/) That’s too bad.