Comfort foods, cabin kitsch interiors, scary gift shops and parking lots full of tour buses. This is what I think about when I think about Cracker Barrel restaurants. This Tennessee based restaurant chain is a mainstay for traveling seniors and baby boomers in search of old fashioned home cookin' type comfort foods. The locations are usually 50% restaurant and 50% gift shop. The gift shops feature everything from candy and candles to moderate priced collectables and home decor items. All of it country themed.

What I was surprised to discover was a brilliant idea that builds loyalty and visit frequency from their target customers. Cracker Barrel offers a Books on Audio program that is simple to understand and use. Aimed at travelers, each restaurant offers a simple kiosk rack of books on cassette and CD priced between $12.99 and $48.00. Customer purchase the titles. Where this gets interesting is the ability customers have to return the titles to any Cracker Barrel location where the are refunded the price of the title minus $3.50 per week for the time they have had the title.

This is beautiful in it's simplicity for the customer. How Cracker Barrel handles distribution and redistribution may be another thing but then they are enticing people to make more visits to their locations.

While the technorati are downloading audio books for their car stereo connected Ipods from Itunes and Audible.com this simple system appeals to boomers and seniors who are comfortable with physical media.

There's a huge opportunity here for other national chains to offer similar services or to expand to offering similar DVD rentals for all of those family filled DVD player equipped SUVs and minivans out there.

Idea for Netflix: How about a special Roadtrip offering which would allow customers to rent a larger number of DVDs to take on a roadtrip. DVDs could be mailed back from anywhere en route.