Hot Chicken Takeover
A fried-chicken restaurant that proved fair-chance employment could be a business model, not just a mission.
Hot Chicken Takeover (HCT) was a Nashville-style hot chicken restaurant founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 2014 by Joe DeLoss and was one of the country's most compelling examples of "fair-chance" employment. We were early investors in HCT, and we exited our position before the founder departed and sold the business. The company has since closed, but the model it demonstrated remains one we're proud to have backed.
Why we invested
We believe work is one of the deepest sources of human dignity and a way people contribute, provide, and belong. Yet for the tens of millions of Americans with a criminal record or a history of homelessness, a fair shot at a job can be nearly impossible to find. HCT was built to change that.
At any given time, between half and two-thirds of HCT's workforce were people with criminal records or other barriers to employment. Rather than treat that as charity, HCT treated it as a competitive advantage by pairing meaningful work with genuinely supportive practices: immediate-need financial matching, financial-literacy programs, and retention bonuses. The results spoke for themselves, including a roughly 70% retention rate in an industry famous for churn. For us, that was one-pocket investing in the truest sense: a real business generating real returns because of, not in spite of, how it treated overlooked people.
A model worth studying
HCT's approach drew national attention and became the subject of a Harvard Business School case study on fair-chance hiring examining how DeLoss built a profitable restaurant around returning citizens and how such a model might scale beyond Columbus. That case continues to teach students and operators that dignity and profitability can be designed to reinforce each other.
Our role: Early investor (exited before the founder's departure)
Type: Fast-casual restaurant built on fair-chance employment
Where: Columbus, OH
Status: Exited; the company has since closed
Why it still matters to us
Not every investment stays open forever, and HCT's story ended with the restaurant's closure after our exit. But the reason we invested hasn't changed. HCT showed, concretely, that a company can build competitive advantage by extending dignity and a second chance to people the labor market writes off which is the same conviction behind our fair-chance work elsewhere, from the jobs we created in Shelby Park to our support of Honest Jobs. We were glad to be early believers, and the lessons endure well beyond the business itself.