In a business where chains tend to change CEOs at the first sign of trouble, Sandra “Sandy” Cochran could still be working through the box of business cards that came with her promotion nearly 12 years ago to the top job at Cracker Barrel Old Country Store.
Indeed, if six founders and their descendants are excluded, the former paratrooper’s only rival for the longevity crown among Technomic’s 50 highest-volume restaurant chains is David Scrivano of Little Caesars, who was named president of that system six years earlier.
Yet despite her long tenure, Cochran is seldom seen at industry conferences. Her public utterances are usually limited to updates on her charge’s financial performance, and even there she tends to nudge the spotlight to her CFO and other subordinates. The only speaking tours she’s known to tread are rounds of unit openings.
She seldom grants media interviews, despite heading a public company (her handlers didn’t so much as respond to our repeated requests for input from Cochran for this story). The CEO of the nation’s second-largest family dining chain is even reluctant to accept awards honoring her or her company.
In short, she may be one of the most reclusive CEOs in the business, even if she’s long reigned as one of the most successful.
It’s not as if she has skeletons best left in hiding. To the contrary, Cochran’s record makes a strong case that her head-down approach to the job has served Cracker Barrel well. During her tenure, systemwide restaurant sales for the chain have grown from $1.93 billion in the CEO’s rookie year to $2.62 billion in 2022, a 36% climb. Average unit volumes have increased 22%, to$3.9 million, the highest tally among the family dining segment’s major chains, according to Technomic.
Biglari back-and-forth
Yet Cochran can’t be assessed by numbers alone. If Bain or McKinsey wanted to develop a test of CEOs’ abilities as a wartime consigliere, they could do worse than start with Cochran’s timeline of trials.
From the day she moved up from CFO to CEO, she has fended off one coup attempt after another by chain raider Sardar Biglari.
The young terror had spun lofty, Warren Buffett-esque rationales for changing Cracker Barrel’s strategic direction and giving himself a key role in setting the plan. He set up an investor-focused website, enhancecrackerbarrel.com, and made it his rebel camp. Out of it came a barrage of press releases, statements and securities filings, all goading his fellow Cracker Barrel shareholders to make him kingpin.
The obvious inference was that Cochran had to go. By 2022, Biglari was expressly saying as much, loudly and often.
It was a booming echo of what Biglari had done successfully at Steak ‘n Shake years earlier, eventually establishing himself as chairman and naming the company after himself. But Cochran and the Cracker Barrel board wasn’t having it. They threw Biglari a concession or two but held control of the board even as the challenge of their authority grew louder and nastier.
Biglari countered with a pitch to fellow shareholders that they force a sale of Cracker Barrel--only to be backhanded by an unintimidated Cochran and the shareholders who supported her.
The CEO observed in a communication to Cracker Barrel shareholders that the value of Steak ‘n Shake’s public parent company had fallen 61% in the decade it was controlled by Biglari. Investors in Cracker Barrel had seen a 520% return for the same timeframe, she dryly noted.
The stock price would climb another 60% in the years that followed.
Then, after more than a decade of protecting her flanks, Cochran extended an olive branch. Last September, Cracker Barrel agreed to support one of Biglari’s picks for a board seat and to compensate the gadfly $500,000 for his failed past attempts at getting representation.
The Punch Bowl spill
But those were hardly the only fireworks of Cochran’s tenure.
Despite her studious avoidance of the limelight, Cochran grabbed considerable attention in 2019 by investing $140 million in an industry moonshot, a plan to develop a chain of department-store-scale game-and-grub arcades called Punch Bowl Social.
By any measure—other, maybe, than profits—Punch Bowl was a hot concept. The locations were envisioned as vertical urban country clubs that would change young people’s social habits while generating sales volumes The Cheesecake Factory would admire. And with only 17 locations open, there was plenty of white space for growth.
A look inside Punch Bowl Social in Denver
Matterport courtesy of Punch Bowl Social
It was hard to imagine a concept less like Cracker Barrel, a slice of nostalgia where the elderly clientele can literally rock on the front porch until they’re seated for a plate of chicken and dumplings.
But sizzle doesn’t cover debt service. When Punch Bowl needed money to keep its lender at bay, Cochran balked at propping up the brand. She severed the partnership with one saber stroke, leaving the upstart chain to drift. Cracker Barrel took a write-off of $133 million.
Punch Bowl would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2020.
Holler and buy
A willingness on Cochran’s part to fail fast was also evident when Cracker Barrel tried a different diversification in 2016. Looking for a way to draw a younger, hipper audience than the graying clientele of Cracker Barrel, the company launched a breakfast-and-lunch-only biscuit concept called Holler and Dash. The fast-casual venture was conspicuously similar to Maple St. Biscuit Co., a highly successful concept that operated in Cracker Barrel’s home state of Tennessee.
While Maple St. cultivated a hardcore following, Holler and Dash struggled to find its footing. By Year Three, Cracker Barrel had opened seven units but wasn’t satisfied with their performance.
So Cochran made a bold decision. Cracker Barrel bought 33-unit Maple St. and converted all of the Holler and Dash units to the concept that likely inspired them.
It was a prescient move. Maple St. has become Cracker Barrel’s main growth vehicle, with 15 units slated to open this year. Cracker Barrel plans to develop only three of its namesake restaurants in that timeframe.
What’s more, one of Cracker Barrel’s main rivals, the Denny’s diner chain, subsequently decided to move in the same direction. Last year it acquired its own breakfast-and-lunch concept, a Florida-based chain called Keke’s.
How she got there
Cochran assumed the CEO’s job at Cracker Barrel in September 2011 after joining as CFO and EVP about 2.5 years earlier. By that time, she’d already logged about five years as a CEO, leading the publicly owned book retailer Books-A-Million. She worked at the book chain for about 12 years after serving in financial posts at SunTrust Bank.
Although the Georgia native rose to the corner office twice through financing, she didn’t put herself on that path until she’d been exposed to a number of other disciplines. Like ordnances, missile systems, computer science and jumping out of airplanes, all in the service of Uncle Sam.
Born into a military family, she attended Lafayette College on an ROTC scholarship but switched in short order to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., where she earned her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering. The school is one of the few institutions to have gotten past Cochran’s reluctance to share personal details, having put together a rare, detailed bio from which much of the information here was taken.
From college, Cochran was commissioned into the U.S. Army. She would rise to the rank of captain while earning a number of honors for her leadership, knowledge and bravery. Those awards included her paratrooper’s wings.
Before leaving the service, she earned an MBA at night from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash. That led to the job post-Army at SunTrust, where she met members of the family that was running Books-A-Million. They recognized her as a standout talent and brought her aboard.
It’s a career history that’s still being written. Among Cochran’s short-term challenges is delivering the marked value that delights Cracker Barrel’s silver-haired fans while providing more of the pizzazz that appeals to a younger cohort—the brand’s future.
There’s also the challenge of continuing to grow the Cracker Barrel chain. The venture was conceived as an exit-ramp big box where car travelers would find classic American fare and a complementary crafts shop selling old-timey gifts for the folks back home. There aren’t that many “A” sites available to a 600-plus-unit chain that’s 100% company-run.
The acquisition of Maple St. Biscuit Co. will likely ease the development pressure.
Besides, how can any management challenge compare with jumping out of an airplane?