I don't think that the old logo is great either, and the update did improve on technical aspects. You don't want to have all that small text, for example. And generally, simpler logos are preferable.

But...their shtick is a rustic feel. Whatever you can say about the original logo, it did evoke that. I have a hard time seeing the new one doing that.

EDIT: I also think that this compares favorably to another controversial recent rebrand: Musk rebranding Twitter, which was generally seen as not a good idea; Twitter already had a strong brand identity. People weren't happy and Musk went right ahead with it regardless. At Cracker Barrel, the initial response was "calm down, it'll be okay", but they were willing to second-guess themselves, even though I expect that there were people there who were invested in the rebrand.

EDIT2: They'd also done smaller, more incremental changes to the logo in the past, because the "Old Country Store" text had had its typeface changed at some point in the past.

EDIT3: Here's a more-comprehensive history:

https://dwglogo.com/cracker-barrel-logo/