While that felon-to-non-felon percentage beats most, other big-name brands, including PepsiCo, IBM, and McDonald’s, are hiring more and more ex-cons. What makes Dave’s different, perhaps, is that the company’s Dave’s founder—Dave Dahl, depicted on the brand’s label in a muscle shirt with a guitar—is a former felon himself. MORE: How to Make Bread Out of Broccoli Before launching the No. 1 organic bread in the country, Dahl was a self-proclaimed thug and meth addict who had just been released after 15 years behind bars for drug-related offenses when he was hired by his brother Glenn at his family’s Oregon-based bakery, NatureBake, in 2004. Soon, Dahl was reformulating the company’s cookie recipe to remove animal products and trans fats. Then he introduced his own line of organic, healthier varieties with names like Good Seed and Rockin’ Rye. In August 2005, Dave’s Killer Bread was born, and soon after, Dahl was bringing on former convicts to mix up the batter for his seeded loaves and bake his famous sprouted grain and other breads. While Dahl is no longer involved in the daily operations of the company—he was charged with a felony in 2013 for ramming two police cars after reportedly having a meltdown at the company’s headquarters—Dave’s continues to actively seek out employees with a criminal background. (Dahl still retains a seat on the board.) “This is a population [of ex-cons] with high unemployment, but they perform as well as someone without a [criminal] background,” said Genevieve Martin, community development manager at Dave’s. “So why would we limit ourselves to a smaller applicant pool than we have to?” MORE: Coming Soon: Gluten-Free Wheat Bread? For Crystal Mourlas-Jaun, a former criminal who’s now community outreach coordinator at Dave’s, working for the bread brand has meant embracing her past rather than hiding from it. “That stigma of being a felon, it’s hard to live with every day,” she says. “Other employers judge you or won’t hire you. Here I’m an open book.” Of course, hiring ex-cons poses business challenges, too. Do you hire someone regardless of his or her crime, even if it’s homicide or rape? Would you be wiling to hire a thief as your financial department? Gina Delahunt, Dave’s human resources manager, says such questions are reviewed on a case-by-case basis. She points to plant manager Ronnie Elrod, who served 18 months on drug charges in the ’80s, as evidence of how high someone can rise. When asked if the ex-cons caused more problems than employees who hadn’t served time, she says that companies can have issues with any employee from time to time, regardless of criminal background. MORE: Is There Gluten in That? Find Out in Seconds with This… Personally, we don’t care if our bread is being made by ex-cons or recovering addicts as long as it tastes good—and no one is more killer in that department than Dave’s.
