Cracker Barrel folded like a checkered tablecloth in the face of right-wing backlash over their logo change. Uncle Herschel is safely back in his rocking chair on the porch but is it over? And who’s next? We’ll take apart this whole saga and discuss what other brands can learn from what happened in the blink of an eye to an iconic American brand.

The big beautiful bill may be big and it may be beautiful but it is far from perfect. Lots of errors and missteps are becoming clearer and one big one may significantly impact corporate charitable contributions and in the restaurant industry, food donation is at the top of the list. We talk to Jim Larson, the Vice President of Development for Food Donation Connection - a major industry partner - to discuss the potential impacts the changing tax law may have on one of our industry’s largest charitable endeavors.

And the MAHA train keeps rolling down the tracks with major developments around Coca-Cola, the ice cream industry, and newly-approved additives by the FDA. We’ll discuss.

We’ll talk about those issues and wrap it up with the legislative scorecard.

The Fourth of July period is usually a pretty sleepy time in the public policy world but this year was anything but. Big beautiful bills, escalating fights over alcohol and sugary beverages and ICE becoming the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the country were just a few of the stories percolating while most of us were at backyard barbecues. We’ll discuss what happened while we were all watching fireworks.

Walmart and Amazon made headlines recently as they consider issuing their own stablecoins in an effort to better serve their customers but also decrease their dependence on the traditional credit card payment systems run by Vias and Mastercard. Dan Swanson, one of the key architects of our industry’s campaign to reign in the Visa/Mastercard duopoly, stops by the pod to talk about these developments and what impact they may have on the payments landscape going forward.

We’ll talk about those issues and wrap it up with the legislative scorecard.

The Administration keeps changing its mind on immigration enforcement and ICE raids. How should restaurant operators view all this and what should they be prepared for? We’ll discuss.