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An Ohio Startup Rebuilds Lives One Piece of Fried Chicken at a Time
- loganfrederick 8y agoI’m very glad to see this article reach the homepage of Hacker News. I met Joe DeLoss while I was studying at Ohio State and he was working at Lutheran Social Services (mentioned in the article). He is the real deal as a social entrepreneur. He has been studying and working on the problem of employing the homeless and those with criminal records for well over a decade now. This was not an overnight success but took many years of tweaking his approach and optimizing between all his goals (a viable business model that could provide employment for the disenfranchised). With Hot Chicken Takeover, he finally found the right business that had a product that had a wide appeal and could be provided by those he wanted to help. His career has been inspiring to follow and made him a hit in the Columbus, OH community.
- gringoDan 8y agoWow. When I worked for a couple of months in Columbus, Hot Chicken Takeover was the most popular restaurant in town (that's not an exaggeration). They sold out of their chicken every single day. I had no idea it also had this social component. Great stuff.
- quadrangle 8y agoSorry, the headline asks for it: net lives rebuilt here is negative given counting the chickens…
- DoofusOfDeath 8y agoAre you kidding? Given the opportunity, chickens eat lots of bugs. Wouldn't surprise me if some shady bug collective provided the seed money for these guys.
- Shivetya 8y agothe real loss here is that we have government which spends billions to incarcerate people and little to support them when out. worse it puts up barriers to any chance of success with an over abundance of occupational license requirements that specifically exclude those who have been jailed. top it off with scarlet letter treatment for some offenses and many of these people have no opportunity to turn their lives around. Hell you cannot be a dog catcher is the majority of this country if you have a conviction. Charitable organizations, family, and private businesses are the few chances they have. We should support all of them and work to get the government out of the way where possible. A felon/former addict/etc stands a much better chance of moving to better jobs if they can land any job and hold it a few months.
- quadrangle 8y agoYeah, I wasn't criticizing the business, just the headline.
- matchbok 8y agoBefore submitting comments you really should stop and ask ... "Is this HN worthy?" No, it is not.
- ars 8y agoI find it pretty disturbing that you equate chicken lives and human lives. Are you trying you imply chicken lives are as valuable as human lives? You are failing at doing so, if that is the case. What you are actually doing is saying human lives are as valuable as chicken lives, i.e., not very valuable. And that's quite disturbing. The value of human life is the cornerstone of human civilization, take that away, as you are trying to do, and you have only devastation left.
- johnchristopher 8y ago> Are you trying you imply chicken lives are as valuable as human lives? You are failing at doing so, if that is the case. What you are actually doing is saying human lives are as valuable as chicken lives, i.e., not very valuable. Your argument doesn't prove your point. FTR, I eat meat and I yet think that chicken lives are as valuable as human. I choose to eat them nonetheless.
- antcas 8y agoThis comment would suggest you would be equally OK with eating a human. Is that the case?
- anoncoward111 8y agoIt sounds like he is merely paying lip service and doublespeak to ethics, rather than actuakly behaving as if he feels their lives are equal. Put a chicken and a human in front of him. Tell him he has to slaughter whichever one he wants for dinner. His real preference will be exposed. I would rather starve.
- johnchristopher 8y agoYou changed the proposition from `eating chicken` to `killing chicken`.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
- dang 8y agoPlease don't post flamebait to Hacker News. The last thing we need is an argument about "equating chicken lives and human lives". Not to mention cannibalism.
- quadrangle 8y agoI wasn't equating them, I was just saying that they are both lives. The headline mentions "lives" and then only one form of life. I was doing a picky critique of the headline, not debating the business.
- forgotmysn 8y agohow is this a start-up?
- Animats 8y agoSan Francisco has a place like that, but upscale: Delancy Street Restaurant, in South Beach.[1] It's a retraining facility for ex-cons, operating since 1991. It's also an excellent restaurant. I recommend the chicken. [1] http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/enterrestaurant.php http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/enterrestaurant.php