• by Tanya Gazdik , September 21, 2025

Steak ’n Shake CEO Sardar Biglari has been a vocal critic of Cracker Barrel’s botched rebranding from the beginning, and has not let up.

He has admitted personal responsibility for a billboard reading “Fire the CEO” in Nashville, the fa st food chain confirmed on Thursday, Sept. 18, in a social media post.

“Biglari, who is a longtime investor in Cracker Barrel and owns nearly 3% of the company's shares, is leading a proxy battle to get rid of Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino,” according to USA Today. “Masino has served in the role since July 2023.”

Biglari filed a statement Thursday asking shareholders to also oust Compensation Committee Chair Gilbert Dávila when both positions come up for a vote Nov. 20.

“He argued that Masino has made multiple missteps since becoming CEO in 2023, including the recent blowup over the chain’s new logo and remodel plan, which has sunk Cracker Barrel’s stock price and led to traffic declines,” according to Restaurant Business. “Biglari also blamed Dávila, 'the Board’s purported marketing expert,' for helping to shape those decisions and for approving outsized pay packages for executives.”

"It's not the first time the company slammed Cracker Barrel on social media for its marketing mishap,” according to Fox Business. 

“'Sometimes, people want to change things just to put their own personality on things,’ Steak 'n Shake posted on X in August, along with an image of part of the old Cracker Barrel logo. "At [Cracker Barrel], their goal is to just delete the personality altogether. Hence, the elimination of the 'old-timer’ from the signage.”

In a statement emailed to USA Today, Cracker Barrel further confirmed that Biglari is behind the billboard.

“This billboard ... is exactly the sort of stunt we would expect from him,” the statement reads. "For fourteen years, our shareholders have rejected his self-serving campaigns against Cracker Barrel. Launching personal attacks from billboards to attempt to disrupt a business like Cracker Barrel is not what serious or well-intentioned investors do and not what Tennesseans expect or deserve.”

Since 2011, Biglari has run seven proxy contests at Cracker Barrel, according to The Wall Street Journal. In an SEC filing dated Sept. 18, Biglari said he and his associates owned 654,141 Cracker Barrel shares of the company’s stock.