LEBANON, Tenn. (WTVF) — Tennessee is home to several nationally known companies, but only one makes its bread and butter off biscuits and gravy. Cracker Barrel got its start in Wilson County more than 50 years ago with its first restaurant along Highway 109 in Lebanon. The restaurant is known for its home cookin’ as much as its unique décor. Newschannel5’s Carrie Sharp learned that nod to the past is a carefully crafted operation.
“This warehouse is about 26,000 square feet and I’ve got about 100,000 pieces in here right now,” says Joe Stewart, Cracker Barrel’s Décor Manager.
He's been part of this operation for 34 years now overseeing a team of eight and a lot of memories -- all stored away in a warehouse at the company’s corporate headquarters in Lebanon.
One of the questions he gets most – “Where do you get all this stuff?”
“It’s a lot of different ways,” says Stewart. “Flea markets, estate sales, shows – Brimfield, Massachusetts is a really good show. Round Top, TX is a really good show.”
Each item that packs the shelves in this warehouse is an original -- each with a story to tell, and conversation to spark. Keeping track of it all is labor intensive. Each item receives a barcode and is tracked with a radio frequency ID system. From floor to ceiling the shelves are organized, labeled, and packed. Even with so many items, Stewart says the search is never over.
“Guitars is what I’m looking for right now, any kind of musical instrument. Things of that nature a lot of kitchen ware, any advertising sign.”
The décor team is also thrifty -- making the frames for all the pictures you see hanging in the restaurants.
Before any items make it to those stores, they get a dry run in the warehouse’s "pre-design area" which is set up to look like a Cracker Barrel restaurant.
“Every piece here was on these walls first,” Stewart says of items boxed up and headed for a new store in Ft. Worth, Texas. “To get it how we want it, pre-designing to see if we like the spacing and then we take pictures of it and we pack it up.”
It's a Tennessee tie to each of the 700 pieces hanging in every one of Cracker Barrel's 661 restaurants across 45 states.
"It's basically a warehouse we're restocking constantly - it's just what we have in the warehouse is really cool."
