By: Diane Benjamin
Pop-Up Chicken owner Aaron Francis create a large social media stir over the weekend when he decided not to pay employees time and a half for working on July 4th.
If you didn’t see it on social media, read this story: https://www.centralillinoisproud.com/news/top-stories/pop-up-chicken-shop-holiday-pay-dispute/
He fired 6 employees for refusing to work without holiday pay even though the employee handbook states workers would receive it. Francis claims the handbook says that by mistake.
In case you forgot, I wrote about Aaron Francis when he wanted a liquor license in February of this year: https://blnnews.com/2026/02/07/unpaid-county-fines-bloomington-liquor-license/
Francis only paid long past due fines to the County to get a liquor license. He has a long criminal violation history going back to 2005.
The City of Bloomington put him on probation for 18 months. Firing employees because he doesn’t want to pay overtime isn’t a violation of the liquor code. Peoria denied his request for a liquor license, Bloomington didn’t.
Evidently Aaron Francis is Bloomington’s “right fit”.
.
.
I’ve been there once and wasn’t impressed. B/N residents need to do their research (this article is a good start) and vote with their wallets. There are plenty of bad bosses out there that need to be exposed for poor treatment of employees.
We’ve been once as well. We do not know what the hype is all about! Expensive, and you do everything yourself (unless that’s changed). I’m all for supporting businesses, but not here.
I read the other article and imho if the handbook had the language in it about being paid time & a half at the time the issue arose the pay should be honored. If the handbook has been updated then next year is different. I guess an employment lawyer needs to weigh in. The statement that the information in the handbook was a mistake (but wasn’t changed right away) is a poor excuse.
One only needs to hear about the true character of an individual to determine their worth. If this business is so hard up that they can’t honor paying those employees that come to work on a holiday half pay more per hour makes you wonder what is being cut behind closed doors.
Are all sanitary practices being followed you know it takes labor and expensive chemicals to keep kitchens clean and sanitary.
I have been there once and have never been back. Service was very lacking.
Wow! What a dumbass! Now that it’s all come out, I’d say chances are good that all employees that if they did not receive holiday pay from the last four years (until the handbook amendment was addded) can contact the state labor board and get that money paid retroactively. My guess is that holiday pay was included in the handbook to entice employee application and retention during that “nobody wanted to work” covid era.
Apparently they have always been closed on holidays and this past 4th was the first time they were ever open on a holiday. So it seems like Frances forgot about the time and a half provision in his handbook, because it had never been implemented before. Not an excuse, as it was written policy AND it’s common practice for most businesses, so he shouldn’t have been surprised when his employees ask about it and then made a stink when he refused, and then overreacted by mass firing. In retrospect,the cost for 10 employees to earn half pay more for just ONE day is pennies compared to the lost good will in the community and future lost business.
Foresight and prudence should have convinced him to lay aside his ego and a couple of hundred dollars.
If this were in a small town in southern Illinois, Mr. Francis might have some investors interested in “private equity” make an appointment after his work day.
By the sounds of Mr Francis’ poor decisions, he either enjoys stealing peoples money or likes to hire slave labor and that gets under my belt. Some local “labor” folks need to have a polite talk with Aaron Francis about proper “employment etiquette, how money and promises work, that people have to feed their families, and it’s best to have proper behavior towards staff, plus the truth behind following labor laws.
Where I grew up in southern Illinois when someone, performed a hard days work, “labor” for a paycheck, “salary”, according to a signed “contract”, “handshake”, or even verbal “agreement” then the agreement was expected to be honored. Otherwise, there were two outcome’s that were both expected and available, either could be considered and accepted, only one, but either. The third was to simply produce some cash.
1. Immediate offer of barter/trade for items of value much greater then, far above the value owed.
2. A less than ideal interest and expense ratio was placed on said, debt involving motivational value far in excess of what was originally owed. Compounded at exponentially exorbitant rates. Bonus is the community knowledge of understanding. With a business partnership and a new phenomenally deep and complex relationship.
Why do business people like this have to be jerks?
Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. James 5:4 NKJV
Im on the left, and its nice to have something we can agree on. My thoughts:
1) If its in the employee handbook that you made your workers sign, then you have to honor it. You can take that clause out, have them resign it, and change course going forward. But you have to honor what you’ve agreed to.
2) The way he spoke to those fired workers in text messages was beyond disgusting. Im not even comfortable sharing what he called one of those young women. It was abhorrent.
3) If you’re going to share all your business and weird opinions on a public social media platform, you have to be ready to deal with the backlash that you’ve created. I can’t imagine many people are going to choose to eat there anymore, even if the food is pretty good.
4) I dont buy any of his nonsense apologies right now. He’s just covering his ass because of how this whole thing blew up.
5) That place has seemed like its been going downhill for a while now. Never many people in there. Not as clean as it used to be. Just really lacking on the upkeep.
6) Finally, the fact that the workers organized that boycott and never approached him about the issue shows that the rot must run deep in that place. Must be a toxic place to work. For the workers to feel that disrespected and have that little trust in him, there has to be a longer history of abuses that we dont even know about.
Okay. With that out, Im ready to go back to disagreeing with just about every single thing that you post. 😂
Yes what he called one of his female workers is so despicable no one wants to repeat the vile comment. Time a half on Holidays like the 4th of July is standard business practice.It was was in the employee handbook. To suddenly announce that it was some sort of cut and paste mistake is ridiculous. He needs to lose his business license. This is not in any way the “right fit’.
back before i retired (ten years ago) i thought holiday pay was double time at most places, so hes already screwing them out of half time
I like their food, a lot, best horseshoe I’ve ever had. But, I will no longer patronize that place.
ps: kudos to Diane for bringing this up and for all she does!
I drove past there yesterday evening after 6 pm to go to Rob Dobs and I counted maybe 4 or 5 cars in the parking lot and some were likely employees, if they still have any.
The word must have gotten out big time.
It just goes to show you have take local media with an entire salt shaker, not just a grain of salt. In 2023, WGLT published a glowing profile of Aaron Francis, even inserting value judgements into the article saying he was growing “the right way.” Meanwhile, the employees had a different story to tell. Hopefully store and brand are sold to someone else — he did build something cool, but he was not mature enough to steward it appropriately. A shame.