Does IHOP hire people with felonies?

What IHOP has said

IHOP's FAQ says 99 percent of its restaurants are franchised, and the apply links on its careers page for nearby restaurants go to individual franchisees' application pages. Its parent, Dine Brands Global, publishes an applicant privacy notice (effective December 31, 2025) and restaurant postings that say qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered under fair-chance laws; the notice also says Dine Brands may collect criminal record information if you consent to a background check. We found no IHOP-specific page on hiring people with criminal records, and IHOP is not on the Second Chance Business Coalition member list.

• Parent company statement

  Dine Brands Global's applicant and employee privacy notice (effective December 31, 2025) says qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment under the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, the California Fair Chance Act and other applicable laws elsewhere. The notice covers Dine Brands and its subsidiaries and doesn't name IHOP or franchisees. IHOP's careers page links to this notice in its footer.¹

• Parent company statement

  Three restaurant postings on Dine Brands' restaurant career site (Radcliff, KY; Grapevine, TX; Loganville, GA) carry the same sentence about considering qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records under those laws and other applicable laws. The postings don't say which brand's restaurant is hiring (their company paragraph names Applebee's, IHOP and Fuzzy's Taco Shop), so we can't tie them to IHOP.²

Does IHOP do background checks?

IHOP hasn't said publicly whether it runs background checks. IHOP doesn't publish its own screening policy. Its parent Dine Brands Global's applicant notice says Dine Brands may collect credit history and criminal record information if you consent to a credit or background check, and that it may use your information for background and reference checks, with your consent, if you are offered a position. That notice covers Dine Brands and its subsidiaries and doesn't name IHOP or franchisees, so we can't say it describes IHOP restaurants, which are almost all franchised.^1,3

• How long a background check takes

Does IHOP drug test?

IHOP hasn't published a drug testing policy. Dine Brands Global's applicant notice says it may collect information to run drug tests on applicants and employees and may receive results from a testing provider. It doesn't name IHOP or say which jobs are tested.¹

Rules for specific jobs

• Team members and managers at franchisee-owned IHOP restaurants

  IHOP says 99 percent of its restaurants are franchised, and its careers page sends applicants for nearby restaurants to franchisees' own application pages. Ask the restaurant's owner about background checks; Dine Brands' notice and postings don't tell you what a franchisee does.³

Your rights, and how far back a check can go

• Under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), an employer must get your written permission before it gets a background report about you from a background screening company.^9,10,11
• Before an employer decides not to hire, keep, or promote you because of something in a background report, it must give you a copy of the report and a document called "A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act."^9,10
• You have the right to dispute inaccurate or incomplete information in your background report directly with the company that made it.^9,12
• The FCRA's seven-year limit does not apply to criminal convictions, so under federal law a conviction can show up on a background report no matter how old it is.^13,14
• Under the FCRA, background and credit reports generally cannot include arrest records, civil lawsuits, or civil judgments that are more than seven years old (or older than the statute of limitations, if that is longer).^13,15

Your full background check rights

Before you apply

• You can ask a background screening company for the information it has on you, and the CFPB keeps a list of consumer reporting companies, including employment screening companies, with their contact details.^9,12,16
• According to the Clean Slate Initiative, 14 states and Washington, D.C. have passed Clean Slate laws that meet its criteria for automatically clearing eligible records: Pennsylvania, Utah, New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan, Delaware, Virginia, California, Oklahoma, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Illinois, and Missouri, plus D.C.¹⁷
• The Federal Bonding Program, run by the U.S. Department of Labor, lets states give employers free fidelity bonds that protect them against losses from a newly hired worker's dishonest acts, for job seekers with past justice involvement or in recovery from substance use.^18,19

See whether you can clear your record in your state