Under the guise of "hurr durr, I'm so stupid I'm going to make all the wrong decisions and the company will fail" Cracker Barrel is intentionally being destroyed. Not for ideological reasons, although that may be the icing on the cake, but for money.
You may remember Yahoo and how Google employee Marissa Mayer was made CEO and immediately started making radical changes. Everyone one of her decisions was a disaster. Yahoo went from near peer to Goggle to being irrelevant. But Marissa isn't stupid, these weren't mistakes, she profited from this destruction. She's now a literal billionaire.
Same thing is happening with Cracker Barrel. Julie Felss Masino isn't a stupid ideologue. She's intentionally tanking the company. Either to lower stock prices so she and her buddies can buy more shares at a discount, or completely torpedoing the company so it can be sold off in parts to it's competitors (owned by her buddies)
I think what you're missing is that CB had two things going for it. Nostalgia and mediocre food. Much like McDonalds, it doesnt matter if you're in NJ, FL, WI or CA you know what to expect from the food. It'll always just be fine. There are many other places that have that, so that's very secondary.
The nostalgia was unique as far as chains go. This is the part they changed. The main reason people went was because they wanted to look at the antiques and have that nice homey vibe instead of a sterile corporate feel.
This would be like if Mr Beast rebranded as a guy who just sits around livestreaming video games. Sure he'd probably be ok at it, but his whole brand is about the crazy stunts. Why would anyone watch him over the 100s of other streamers then?