What is the hiring process like at Cracker Barrel?

Decent starting salary and training

First of all you don't accrue PTO or sick time as a manager here. You get one 40 hour week in your first two years. Which you are always scheduled 50 anyway so how does that make sense? If you want or need some time off for literally ANYTHING, then prepare to work over a week straight. I'm currently on my second stretch of days (8 days in a row) after working 10 straight the week before. All because I needed some time off when family that I never see came into town. The other managers have absolutely 0 life whatsoever beyond working there unless they've been there forever and get a few weeks PTO. Prepare to be looked down at when you don't want to spend your whole life there. Always some sort of weirdness put on the back burner or suppressed because old men managers get weird with the underage employees they have running around. They rely on paying their hourly employees terribly who stick it out for them, but when they need something or have an issue the managers will say "screw em we don't need them" behind closed doors. Anytime an employee calls in, schedules time off, or puts in an availability they don't like then the manager who makes the schedule will retaliate by taking away their hours. I've had over 6 employees beg me to take over scheduling and cite that their experience has been just that. If you come into a store with tenured management then they're going to look down on you and likely talk bad about you to the other managers. Then they will use you to be the grunt and cover all of the vacations and time off the rest of the management takes. You have to physically look at your employees transparent work bag and pat down their aprons to make sure they aren't "stealing" whenever they are ready to leave. Backup cooks get the shaft as they basically make food and bread in mass, usually alone and for terrible pay. Servers get so overstaffed they don't get a chance to make good money on slower days. There is no flexibility at all and overall the place has given me a really off-putting feeling ever since I started working there. I really don't recommend to anyone with a family or plans to do get anything accomplished beyond working there. You'll work so much the time you do have off will be used to catch up on home-life tasks and sleeping. The money is nice, but at 60k a year you're looking at doing all parts of the restaurant. There is no KM, service manager, or ect. It's all you guys all the time. If you work at a high volume store without adequate kitchen staff then prepare to be in the weeds for hours and run out of product despite having multiple managers on duty. They recently cut the ETC position that was responsible for hiring and orienting staff, subsequently getting rid of alot of people's livelyhoods and then passing that responsibility onto the management team. You would be better off working as a server or shift leader and racking up some overtime without all the responsibility and commitment to working 100+ hours in 10 days. I could go on and on. Long story short, if you have no life outside work and don't mind spending all your time there just to make alright money for the position, sure it might work for you. But I would say you would be alot happier having an appropriate work-life balance somewhere else and even taking an hourly position with a bit of overtime per week. Save yourself the BS and stay away.

I enjoyed the fast pace of everything. Computer programs were easy to learn.

The management wasn’t very supporting of me as a new hire.

good experience, forces you to be good at taking many tables at once and multitask because you have so much work to do. no tip pooling. i’ve made good friends here. you get sick pay as long as you get approved for it and after a year you get 40 hours of pto.

not enough staffing. servers have to do prep work including making salads, portioning, making potatoes, etc along with togo work as well with no extra pay. sidework is excessive, servers have to break every single thing down in the server aisle with no extra pay for that either, which there is a lawsuit going on for this as well. management here is terribly unprofessional and far from understanding. rude and extremely discouraging tactics to try and make you sell things for them, way too much work for the final payout considering this is the cheapest restaurant in the world and completely lacks any reasoning to want to stay there. been stuck here for 2 years and i want to leave so bad but no where is hiring. they refuse to hire togo servers and continue to hire new servers when we have plenty, of course leaving servers to be forced to spend their time putting together togos for free labor. don’t hire enough dish staff or prep staff leaving servers to have to go back in dish to help or to go make their own food in prep. ridiculous, only to make $15 off a group of 7 people when they truly did tip 20%, not a single other restaurant i can thing of that would require so much work for so little payout. i’ve had friends switch and they love their new job so much more and say it’s so much more money. no bussers unless you’re on the morning weekend shift, and speaking of, night shift is completely abandoned. always running out of food, especially daily specials at 5 pm when we close 4 hours later. no one in the morning cares about how they leave the night shift in any position, making us all scramble to pick up the pieces to be able to have a decent night. most weekday nights are hell, no server staff or togo , leaving us all with huge sections and lots of stuff to clean up alone, and extra sidework to split between the already small amount of servers. hosts are never properly trained and have no idea what they’re doing, i can’t count the amount of times i’ve had to train hosts or togo servers because no management actually cares about how they are doing or what they are doing and it constantly screws over all the servers and guests. i could complain about this place for hours but i will stop here. also everyone is shady especially morning girls, extremely rude and awful people. i remember hearing and seeing in training videos when i started that we have access to a 401k and health insurance and student loan benefits but ive yet to see any access to any of these things. i’ve never had such a job that’s made me so depressed where i can’t do anything before or after my shift, ive lost all my hobbies because of how exhausting and draining this job is.

Employee discount... only while on the clock

- They'll schedule you under 6 hours each week and use the same tired excuse of labor costs, all while hiring 10 new employees. I can't afford to drive to work and back with the 4 hours of work I do in a week.

Easy application process and interview process

Pay is super low and sections are based on favoritism

Clear and concise communication Simple interview process

No cons at the moment.

having a job in the restaurant industry was a requirement for me to graduate with a AAS.

it takes 7 years to get a 3-week vacation. every employee needs a raise particularly the ones whose been there for years for example, old employees make $12, and the new hire makes $14. Then they expect the old employees to come in and basically doing everybody job for essentially for free but then the new hires come and do like 4 or 5 things