Meet Rob Perez | person of faith, husband, dad and second chance employer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rob Perez and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rob, we’d love to start by asking you about lessons learned. Is there a lesson you can share with us?
Most employers believe they can not hire people in a second chance position.

We are rely on “old ways of thinking” about how to source, hire, relate and employ people. We all need a job. However, we have lots of policies, rules and protection built around excluding people from employment.

Our experience suggest that the business community biggest challenge, we have forgotten how important a job is to all people. We have a golden opportunity to help people and build a stronger community. What if we considered how to employ people with different backgrounds? What reasonable business decisions would we consider employing people with a past including generational poverty, incarceration, addiction, etc.?

Could free enterprise be the prefect place to help people redirect their lives after addiction, incarceration or generational poverty?

DV8 Kitchen has shown us providing jobs are life changing. We now believe, if every business hired one person overlooked because of their past, it could change the world.

What should our readers know about your business?
DV8 Kitchen hires people who are in early stages of recovery from substance use disorder. In addition to recovery, 98% have a past of incarceration and 45% from generational poverty. We have found that when we validate and hold our staff accountable to recovery, we have great business result.

Previous to opening DV8, we hired second chance employees at our other restaurants. When interviewing second chance candidates we asked no questions about recovery or inquired about strategies and plans to stay in recovery. We managed people no differently than a traditional employer.

Unfortunately, we were not successful in hiring second chance employees.

At DV8, we discovered holding a second chance employee accountable to recovery by validating their recovery program, safe housing and substance testing as a condition of employment is effective. Over the past 5 years, this process can be directly linked to successful employment. Our methods for recovery accountability are simple to administer and requires only minutes for an employer to complete.

Over a year’s time, many of our employees pay restitution for their past infractions, completing 12-month recovery program and are gainfully employed at DV8. Unfortunately, most cannot find another job outside of DV8 . Many employers who offer low paying, manual labor jobs do not offer second chance employment. Almost all employees who are trained and educated engineers, nurses, college professors, etc. cannot find employment in their original career.

I frequently hear people rhetorically ask; “Why do people often return to addiction or go back to jail?”. Maybe it is no harder than, PEOPLE NEED JOBS!

Since opening DV8 in 2017, it has become apparent, more focus must be placed second chance employment. The supply side is strong. Many studies estimate that 20% of our American workforce can be categorized in a second chance employment position. However, too few employers will challenge traditional HR practices or EEOC guidelines to source, interview, hire and hold people with a past of addiction or incarceration. The demand side of second chance employment is the issue.

We have worked with 90 other businesses who are interested in becoming second chance employers. We are fully transparent with our proven procedures, documents and processes. We acknowledge that not all are not completely free from legal scrutiny. However, our procedures are set up to mitigate financial exposure and do not create any significant legal risk. Our methods for recovery accountability are simple to administer and requires only minutes for an employer to complete.

Generally, businesses love the idea of being a second chance business but not make the leap to become a second chance employer as we because of the risks. However, DV8 choses to do this because we believe it is the right human thing to do.

We believe it is vital that we find a way to give people a job instead of automatically eliminating an opportunity for employment. The DV8 results confirm that second chance employment can be successful. DV8 Kitchen has better tenure & turnover than the national restaurant average and is profitable. In addition, our employees have earned the distinction of being named the Top 40 Best Rated Restaurant in America based on Yelp reviews. 100% of our staff has a past in addiction and incarceration. Sadly, 95% of other American business would not even offer these wonderful employees an interview, much less a job.

There are people who believe Free Enterprise is ruining America. Our experience suggests Free Enterprise may be able to save us.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
A hike at the Asbury Trails in Wilmore, lunch a Ramirez and afternoon UK basketball game and dinner with friends and family at our home.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My wife and business partner Diane. She believe that it was important and appropriate to take a chance on people as an employer.

When my wife approached me with the idea of using a restaurant to help people struggling with substance abuse, I was NOT interested.

Previously we had employed many people at our other restaurants with a past of addiction and here’s what I knew: They’d admit to their past. Claim to be clean. We would hire them and most would disappear within 2 weeks. I did the math: nearly $800 apiece. People in addiction cost money.

Diane didn’t give up. She had done her own math. We had lost 10 of our employees to fatal overdoses in just 8 years. Diane was heartbroken. She did not care about the cost. But I wasn’t on board. So, she scheduled a police ride along for me. On a Friday afternoon I saw something that changed my perspective forever. I witnessed a woman get paid as she was exiting a man’s car. She walked directly to the corner, gave her dealer the money and received her fix.

Nobody wants to sell their dignity for 5 dollars. But she was hooked and she was desperate. What else can she do?

Ultimately, this was the question Diane had been desperate to answer. Now it was keeping me up at night too. We had lost some of our very best employees to addiction, we knew a job alone wasn’t the answer. We felt that recovery without a job doesn’t seem very successful either. We believe people need the support of a recovery community AND the purpose of a job.

We didn’t have any of the answers. We just knew it was complicated. So we did what any sane person would do: We started a restaurant to figure it out.

In August 2017 DV8 Kitchen was born. I had 1 condition: It had to be profitable. We developed a menu, hired employees, prepared for opening day, excitedly flung open the doors and…IT WAS AN EPIC FAIL!

We had no idea how to validate that our employees were in recovery, how to motivate them and our customers were basically afraid of us.

So, over the next couple of months, we took a hard look at what we were doing and tried to learn from our mistakes. We learned 2 big things:

First, you do not need to be a social worker to employ people in recovery.

However, you can have recovery experts on your team. People in recovery do need more than a job to be successful. They need housing, therapy, case workers… Their lives can be complicated. So we forged relationships with residential living facilities. These centers validate our employees are staying in their program and provide the support they need to arrive at DV8 ready to work. (and it’s free)

Second, you don’t need to lower your standards to employ people in recovery. In fact, you should raise your standards. So many of our people shared one thing: shame. It was both a cause of their substance abuse, and a result of it. We realized work was perfect place to build them up. We decided to set a higher standard because, not only are our people capable of meeting it, they needed to see that they could. Our mantra became 20% better. From how they greet customers to the care they put into making the food – they are never less than excellent.

Without Diane we would not have built these two restaurants, a wholesale bakery and learned how to effetely employ people who frequently have no hope for a job. She has taught me to be more positive, thoughtful and deliberate in living out our faith. Without her none of this would have happened.

Website: dv8kitchen.com

Instagram: @dv8kitchen

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robperez64/

Facebook: @dv8kitchen