Why Lansing's Eastside Fish Fry & Grill thrives with felons on its payroll
Eric LacyLANSING — Juan Turrubiates struggled to find stable work.
After serving eight years in prison for dealing firearms without a license and other convictions, Turrubiates got a job at his family's Mexican restaurant in Okemos until they sold it.
He then joined an auto supplier in Delta Township as an assembly line worker, but parted ways with the company after a series of injuries.
Then came an idea: Work at Eastside Fish Fry & Grill, one of Turrubiates' favorite stops, for owner Henry Meyer, a former co-worker at a Jiffy Lube.
Turrubiates, 38, has been Eastside's manager for the past five years.
“You’re only as valuable as you allow yourself to be," Turrubiates said. "If you want to stay at minimum wage, that’s because you choose not to learn, not because there’s not room for opportunity."
The owner of one of the most popular eateries in mid-Michigan, featured on the Food Network's Guy Fieri show "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives," believes in second chances.
Of Meyer's 16 current employees, 10 are convicted felons — an all-time high for his business. He's always looking for more.
The 34-year-old Lansing native, also a felon, served more than two years in a federal prison for growing at least 100 marijuana plants.
These days, Meyer hustles chicken, fish and even Louisiana alligator. He's had at least 40 men and women with felonies work for him since Eastside opened in 2012.
"I want people who work here to be just as hungry as me," Meyer said. "I don't ever want to lose that hunger.
"We have a saying here: 'Super Bowl every day.'"
That mantra stems from a sales record set Feb. 3 (Super Bowl Sunday), when the staff sold over 18,000 chicken wings — about 15,000 more than the average day.
Meyer admits the record may be difficult to break. Yet it reminds them to reach for success every day.
Against all odds
Of the more than 13,000 men and women in Michigan with felonies who are currently on parole, statistics compiled by the state show they face long odds for job retention.
The state Department of Corrections is trying to change that.
“We still find that a lot of different individuals still have a hard time because of this scarlet letter effect," said Chris Gautz, a department spokesman.
Michigan's parole employee rate was 25 percent in 2014 and 39½ percent last year, according to the department. Most parole terms last about two years.
At Eastside, three of the 10 employees with felonies are currently on parole. Everyone else with a conviction has been free from parole for several years.
Most employees make $10 to $14 an hour and are encouraged by Meyer to make time for their families, especially those with young children.
The single father of two children refuses to hire people who have violent crime or sexual assault convictions.
Some workers with felonies have taken advantage of Meyer's generosity and eventually left or were fired. But that doesn't stop Meyer from extending opportunities.
"I've been burned just as much as the next person who didn't give that man or woman a chance," said Meyer, who checks in with employees' parole officers regularly. "So who's doing the right thing?"
Sales are so robust for the business, with over 100 menu items, that Meyer contemplates eventually opening a second location.
A win-win?
Lansing developer Pat Gillespie got to know Meyer about three years ago and is a loyal Eastside customer.
They talk often about real estate. Meyer owns a few rental properties in the area.
Gillespie considers Eastside's seasoned fried chicken wings a staple for Michigan State football tailgating parties and other special events.
He wouldn't be surprised if Meyer's willingness to hire felons catches on with other employers in the area.
"If he's able to be successful doing this, then what a market to help people that need a second chance," Gillespie said. "Everybody is looking for a workforce that's willing to work, show up every day and be part of your growth.
"He's finding that recipe."
Eastside may be the only business in the Lansing region with fewer than 20 employees that has a felon-majority workforce and promotes publicly its willingness to hire more, according to local economic development officials.
Seven years strong, Eastside challenges the success rate for small businesses across the nation.
The Small Business Administration has found in studies since 1995 that about two-thirds of businesses survive their first two years, half survive at least 5 years and about 40 percent survive 10 years.
Emily Daunt, a Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association spokesperson, said in an email the association doesn't keep year-to-year statistics about restaurant success rates.
But state officials are bullish about the industry, which employs some 447,200 people and is expected to add jobs over the next decade.
The association recently surveyed its 5,000 members about employment for people with felonies.
Some 77 percent of the association's restaurant owners would be willing to hire previously incarcerated individuals and 93 percent would do so if they had food service certification credentials, Daunt said.
Edythe Copeland, CEO of Capital Area Michigan Works!, said there are several companies in the state that hire people with felonies on a "case by case" basis.
But some employers, Copeland said, are reluctant to advertise they are felon friendly because of concerns it could affect their bottom line.
Eastside has an opportunity to convince other employers they should have more faith in felons, Copeland said.
“I think it could be a win-win," Copeland said of Eastside's model. "But I do think that other businesses involved in this type of hiring also have to be willing to speak up.”
Employee empowerment
Erikka Saybay, 36, said she couldn't ask for a better workplace environment.
Saybay, one of at least three Eastside managers with felonies, beams with pride when asked about the Super Bowl chicken wings record set this year in the kitchen.
"We know we’re back there kicking butt," she said smiling.
For years, Saybay felt she couldn't escape her past, which included four years in prison for possession of narcotics and a weapons charge.
After Saybay's release nearly 10 years ago, she gave birth to a stillborn baby boy and went through a divorce.
Now a single mother of two, Saybay laughs when she recalls how her life changed with a Facebook post.
She scrolled through her news feed and discovered a job posting on Eastside's page. The post made it clear that felons were welcome to apply.
Saybay showed up 20 minutes early for her job interview with Meyer, took the offer a few days later and became a manager within about five months.
For the first three months, Saybay didn't have a vehicle. But she set up a payment plan with Meyer to buy a used van for $2,000.
“We don’t have to worry about people looking down on us," Saybay said of her co-workers with felonies. "We’re just here to do a job.”
Rural roots
Meyer has never been afraid of hard work and challenges.
As a child, he would spend summers at his grandparents' dairy farm in Shepherd, Michigan.
He would drive the tractor, milk cows and bale hay.
Meyer also loved to take apart broken toys and fix them.
By fourth grade, he was part of a team that won a nationwide competition to invent a suit for space travel.
At 16, Meyer bought his first rental property. His father, Greg Meyer, co-signed on a mortgage for the three-unit $100,000 apartment house.
While Henry Meyer excelled managing and fixing rental properties, he also took risks with the law.
As a student at Eastern High School, Meyer became intrigued with marijuana. He once skipped school with friends of his older brother, Barney, and started to experiment with marijuana.
Meyer then realized how much he could make growing marijuana.
"My pot was good," said Meyer, who no longer smokes. "And when it dried, it sold — right away."
Meyer became such a stellar grower that he developed contacts in Michoacán, Mexico and showed people there how to infiltrate the market.
He would travel to Mexico about three times a year and stay a week at a time.
In 2010, Meyer's commercial cannabis success in Lansing was halted by local law enforcement officials, according to federal court documents.
They found at least 15 pounds of marijuana and over 100 plants inside a home Meyer rented in Lansing strictly for growing.
Law enforcement officials found the marijuana because a bank took ownership of the home after Meyer's landlord failed to pay the mortgage.
This incident occurred two years after the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act was passed and eight years before voters approved recreational use.
Meyer, with his lawyer, turned himself in to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. He was sentenced in Grand Rapids by U.S. District Court Judge Robert Holmes Bell to 30 months in a Pennsylvania prison.
Meyer also received four years of supervised release, court records said.
Stinger cooking
While in prison, Meyer said he read at least 50 books including Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" and "Walden Pond." He also cooked in the prison's kitchen.
Cellmates introduced Meyer to the "stinger," prison slang for a dangerous electric device used to boil water for cooking their own meals.
Meyer and at least three other cellmates would often serve up weekly meals using their stinger. It consisted of two pieces of welded metal connected to rubber and wires that plugged into an electrical outlet.
Dropped in a plastic bucket, the stinger boiled water needed to cook food wrapped in trash bags. The food was either stolen from the kitchen or purchased at the commissary.
Meals of seasoned rice with chicken were a staple for a group that learned how to work together under depressing circumstances, Meyer said.
"Everybody has put something in," Meyer said of the family-style meals. "You're the metal guy; this guy is the connect to the trash bags; this guy will get the water bucket; I'm the connect for the food.
"Everybody plays a part. Everybody feels important."
Upon his release in 2012, Meyer put the lessons he learned behind bars about cooking and teamwork to use.
A family friend gave Meyer the opportunity to resurrect the former Eastside Market on Kalamazoo Street.
The re-branded Eastside Fish Fry & Grill opened in 2012.
At first, the goal was to fill 80 orders per day.
By 2014, Meyer blew that mark away with up to 200 orders daily.
When Eastside started selling food at festivals that year, including the Michigan BluesFest in Old Town, Meyer felt he finally arrived.
Eastside earned trust as a viable business and was no longer thought of as "some ghetto place on the east side," Meyer said.
The business' rise still surprises Greg Meyer, Henry's 68-year-old father.
In the beginning, Greg Meyer warned his son that starting a restaurant is risky.
“At first I thought ‘Whoa, you’re probably going to fall flat on your face,'" Greg Meyer said. "'But do what you got to do, go ahead and try it.'"
Greg Meyer eventually bought into the dream. He helped find local contractors to renovate the building.
Henry Meyer purchased the building in 2014 for $45,000 on a land contract. The restaurant did well enough its first two years that he paid off his rental home he purchased at 16.
Surviving a setback
In 2016, Meyer said he found himself blindsided by the State of Michigan.
At that time, state officials enforced stricter rules on the food purchases people on government assistance could make with electronic benefit transfer cards.
People with the cards can't purchase hot food and other items that can be eaten in stores and restaurants.
No longer able to take EBT cards, Meyer said his business lost about $600,000 in sales over a two-year span.
Struggling to make payroll for at least six months, Meyer said he experienced a miracle during the summer of 2017 that kept Eastside alive.
An employee from the Food Network called and said Guy Fieri was interested in filming his "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" show there.
After several calls back and forth, the show's crew gave Meyer only 10 days notice that Fieri would arrive to start filming.
Meyer closed his business for two days to accommodate Fieri.
Once the show aired on TV in fall of 2017, sales began to soar.
Eastside employees also started fielding calls and emails from people with felonies in need of work. They still get a few when reruns air.
Seasoned chicken wings have been so popular that employees push themselves to break daily frying records.
They can fry at least 1,000 chicken wings in 30 minutes.
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The chicken wings recipe originates from Meyer's mother, Irene.
"We just kind of took what we had been eating our whole life for fried chicken and added a little bit of zing and a little bit of zang," Meyer said.
'Calculated risks'
As buzz from Fieri's show grew, David DeMarco, a sports radio personality, encouraged Meyer to hit the market hard with advertising.
Meyer is now seeking approval from the City of Lansing to put a replica of the S.S. Minnow from the "Gilligan's Island" classic TV show on top of his building.
DeMarco gave him the idea.
"He's a guy that takes calculated risks and does the right thing," DeMarco said of Meyer. "Whatever somebody wants, he can do."
Meyer may be picking the best time to consider expansion because the city's east side has been uplifted by economic boom the past couple of years.
New apartments, coffee shops, bars and eateries have sprouted along East Michigan Avenue.
And work could begin within the next year to revitalize the former Red Cedar Golf Course site.
Plans call for student housing, market-rate apartments and two hotels, along with restaurants and retail.
No matter what happens with his venture, Meyer said he'll stay loyal to the people he's able to help.
"I'm proud of these guys and gals here for trusting me to run the show," said Meyer, who still takes calls and emails from people in prison. "When I make mistakes, they ride with me.
"When I hit it big, they ride that wave with me, too."
Eric Lacy is a reporter for the Lansing State Journal. Contact him at 517-377-1206 or elacy@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @EricLacy.
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Prisons to professions
- The Michigan Department of Corrections says there are currently 13,607 parolees in the state. The employment rate among parolees in 2014 was 25 percent and rose to 39½ percent last year. A typical parole term is two years.
- State officials created in 2016 a trades program called Vocational Village that debuted at the Richard Handlon Correctional Facility, a medium security prison in Ionia. A second site was launched in 2017 at the Parnall Correctional Facility in Jackson.
- The programs have produced a 70 percent hire rate among people released on parole, according to department data. At capacity, the prisons accommodate 405 vocational trade students, 59 trade tutors and 12 building trade workers.
- Vocations that parolees have pursued through the program include carpentry, plumbing, welding, automotive technology, electrical, robotics and masonry. For information visit michigan.gov/corrections.
- State officials are currently building a third vocational village at a women's prison in Ypsilanti. It will offer programs in cosmetology, 3D printing and computer coding.
- A Pell Grant program at Jackson College, in Jackson, Michigan, allows prisoners to earn associate's degrees in entrepreneurship.
- The Department of Corrections also offers food technology programs at its prisons throughout the state, including facilities in Jackson, Coldwater, Adrian and Lenox, Michigan.
- The Lakeland Correctional Facility in Coldwater has a food technology program that's been led by Lansing native Jimmy Lee Hill, an executive chef, for 30 years. Detroit Free Press restaurant critic Mark Kurlyandchik had lunch at the facility last year, wrote a positive review and described the fare as "unforgettable."
- Prisoners who participate in food technology programs are able to get ServSafe certification. The training and certificate program is administrated by the National Restaurant Association.