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The results are in, and Long Islanders want to see a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store come to the abandoned Fridays building in Bay Shore.
Votes poured in from across Nassau and Suffolk counties in recent GLI polls, where we asked people to choose among several restaurants that would be suitable for the vacant space.
Cracker Barrel dominated the Facebook poll, garnering a whopping 60 percent of the votes among seven options, with 57 percent of GLI Instagram followers clamoring for Cracker Barrel as well.
Texas Roadhouse (13%) and LongHorn Steakhouse (11%) came in at a distant second and third on Facebook.
Should Cracker Barrel brass learn of these poll results and oblige, Bay Shore would mark the national chain’s first foray onto Long Island or the five boroughs.
But we’re not holding our breath.
For now, the Southern-inspired comfort food restaurant and retail chain remains a road trip novelty.
Click here for Greater Long Island newsletters. We’ll keep you posted.
“Cracker Barrel is not coming to LI because that would be awesome,” one Facebook commenter, Kathy Ewald, lamented.
The closest locations are in Mildford, Conn., Fishkill, N.Y., or Clinton or Mt. Arlington, N.J.
“It would be nice to have a Cracker Barrel in Bay Shore instead of going to Connecticut just to go there,” wrote Cynthia Cinzia Schiavone, also on Facebook.
Fridays shut its Bay Shore location at the South Shore mall just as 2024 was getting underway. The building remains empty along the northern side of Sunrise Highway.
— Cracker Barrel Country Store exterior shot. Credit: Cracker Barrel on Facebook