Over 90% of businesses use background checks as a primary screening tool. People with criminal records face a 50% reduced likelihood of getting hired. For Shannon Wilson, who had spent 15 years incarcerated, every job application was a dead end, until she found Hot Chicken Takeover, which had a different policy.
Joe DeLoss founded Hot Chicken Takeover in Columbus, Ohio, specifically to hire people that conventional employers reject: people with criminal records, people experiencing homelessness, people in addiction recovery. The restaurant’s employee retention rate exceeds 70%, significantly higher than the industry benchmark in a sector notorious for turnover.
The Fair Chance Model and Why It Works Here
Hot Chicken Takeover doesn’t just hire people facing barriers. It builds infrastructure around the employment to make the employment stick.
Every employee has access to referrals for mental health counseling and housing services, emergency cash assistance programs, and savings-matching schemes. These aren’t perks — they’re the support system that addresses the reasons employment typically doesn’t work out for people recently released from incarceration or experiencing homelessness. A job doesn’t solve a housing crisis. A job plus a connection to housing resources does.
The savings-matching program in particular addresses a structural gap: people re-entering society after incarceration typically have no savings, no credit history, and no buffer for unexpected expenses. A savings match gives employees a pathway to financial stability that changes the cost-benefit calculation of staying employed versus returning to the environments that led to incarceration.
Shannon Wilson went from dishwasher to executive coordinator. Her story isn’t unique at Hot Chicken Takeover, though it’s not universal either — the model doesn’t succeed with everyone, and DeLoss is honest about that.
The conventional hiring model treats criminal history as a disqualifying fact. Hot Chicken Takeover treats it as context — relevant information about obstacles faced, not a verdict on future capacity.
The Business Case
DeLoss came from investment banking before founding Hot Chicken Takeover, which means he understood the business model had to work on financial terms before it could sustain its social mission. Three locations in Columbus (Olde Towne East, Clintonville, and Easton Gateway) demonstrate that the model scales commercially.
The 70%+ retention rate is the financial engine of the social mission. Restaurant industry turnover typically runs 70-80% annually, meaning most restaurants replace most of their staff every year. High turnover has direct costs: recruiting, training, productivity loss during onboarding. Hot Chicken Takeover’s retention rate is the business case expressed numerically: investing in employees produces lower turnover, which produces lower operating costs.
This is the alignment that makes the model sustainable: the social investment (wraparound support services) reduces the financial drag (turnover costs) while producing the social outcome (stable employment for people who had limited access to it).
What This Model Requires
Hot Chicken Takeover’s model requires a founder — and an operating team — who genuinely believe in the people they’re hiring and treat them accordingly. DeLoss has said directly that the model won’t work without treating employees with dignity and respect. The cultural precondition is as important as the operational infrastructure.
Fair chance hiring policies are expanding in law as well as practice: San Francisco and New York City both restrict when employers can ask about criminal history, removing the automatic disqualification that most background check screening produces. The Fair Chance Act applies to federal contractors. These trends create a more hospitable policy environment for the model Hot Chicken Takeover has built.
To find out more about Hot Chicken Takeover, visit their:
P.S. If you’re in Columbus, eating at Hot Chicken Takeover is one of the more direct ways to support a fair chance employer, and the Nashville-style hot chicken is genuinely worth going for on its own merits.