CBRLCracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc.
Is the business good?
More warning than reassurance: margins compressing and returns that lean on debt.
Mixed fundamental signals. Nine pass/fail tests of year-over-year health from the filings.
Operating margin has narrowed over the past few years, profitability per dollar of sales is eroding.
Leverage-amplified, a high assets-to-equity ratio does much of the work. ROE 4% = margin × turnover × leverage.
Unless marked, from derived.
Against the whole market›
Percentile against every name Ryufin tracks. Higher is better; the tick marks the middle of the market. Context, not one of the checks above.
Where this answer is blind. The F-score rewards improvement, so an already-elite company can score mid-pack.
How good a business is CBRL?
Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. earns −1.3% on the capital it employs against a 9.0% cost of capital, so growth costs more than it returns.
Return on invested capital · cost of capital 9.0% · 10 points below what the capital costs: growth destroys value
- Operating margin
- −0.38%
Operating margin · Restaurants median 7.8% · 12 months to Q4 2026
- Gross margin
- 69%
Gross margin
| Year | Operating margin |
|---|---|
| FY2021 | 13% |
| FY2022 | 4.7% |
| FY2023 | 3.5% |
| FY2024 | 1.3% |
| FY2025 | 1.6% |
| FY2026 | −0.38% |
Details›
- Gross margin12 months to Q4 2026
- 69%
- Operating margin12 months to Q4 2026
- −0.38%
- Net margin12 months to Q4 2026
- 0.95%
- Free cash flow margin
- 2.7%
- Revenue, trailing twelve months
- $3.32B
- Free cash flow, trailing twelve months
- $88M
- Net income, trailing twelve months
- $32M
- Return on invested capitaloperating profit after tax ÷ debt + equity − cash
- −1.3%
Margins, capital and share counts from the statements as filed with the SEC; cash conversion is operating cash flow over operating profit after tax.