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Cracker Barrel Is Making People Rich. Here's How You Can Join In.

By John Maxfield – Mar 9, 2014 at 9:58AM

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Want to know a secret about Cracker Barrel? Beyond its popular southern comfort food, the company is also offering up heaping platefuls of profits to shareholders.

You may love Cracker Barrel Old Country Store (CBRL -0.49%) for its Southern comfort food, but other people appreciate the Tennessee-based chain for an entirely different reason. That is, it's making investors rich.

Over the past decade, Cracker Barrel's shares have beaten the S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.57%) by a factor of two. And if you extend it back even further -- going back to, say, the mid-1980s -- it's outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of four. Indeed, as I've previously discussed, had you invested $10,000 in Cracker Barrel's stock in 1985, it would be worth more than $1 million today.

In the following video, Motley Fool contributor John Maxfield explains that the restaurant chain has accomplished this feat by opening new restaurants and taking care of shareholders. With only a few exceptions, it's paid dividends every quarter since the mid-1980s. And over the past 10 years, its outstanding share count has been sliced in half.

John Maxfield and The Motley Fool have no position in any of the stocks mentioned. We Fools don't all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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