The afternoon sun sets over downtown Dallas, reflecting light off steel and glass onto Thanks-Giving Square. It’s 5:30 pm, and the dinner service at Café Momentum has just begun.

Looking through the window, the Café could be any top-rated fine dining restaurant—chatter and warm light spilling through the kitchen window into a dimly lit dining room, the servers dressed head-to-toe in black uniforms, and the half-dozen kitchen staff wrapped in aprons, non-slip shoes, and gingham pants. Yet, as anyone here will tell you, this is not a normal restaurant.

A Dallas restaurant that doubles as a nonprofit professional training facility for kids impacted by the juvenile justice system is a living example of its motto, "Eat, drink, change lives."

Chad Houser, owner of Café Momentum, told "Good Morning America" he created "a movement to change the model for youth justice. This team is here to make sure you guys are successful -- and that you feel like you're being set up for success," Houser said, speaking directly to the young people in his program.

The maître d’ flashes a party of three a toothy smile before escorting them to a wooden table in the middle of the dining room. Standing as straight as a soldier in his pressed black shirt, he hands out menus and informs them that a server will come over in a minute to share the night’s specials. “Welcome to Café Momentum,” he says.

It is a routine that JeDarrian Jones pulls off with the finesse of a seasoned host, not a 16-year-old in his first night on the job. Not a kid who has been locked up four times in Dallas County’s juvenile detention center for robbery and other crimes.

In 2007, Chad Houser bought into a popular bistro in Dallas, and his dream of being a top chef and restaurant owner was fulfilled. “I remember the feeling I had was exhilaration,” he said. “I had done it.”

In his first year of ownership, Houser helped grow the business and was nominated by a local magazine as best up-and-coming chef in Dallas. Then something happened that changed the way he viewed success.

“I had an opportunity to go teach eight young men inside a Dallas County juvenile detention facility how to make ice cream for a competition,” he said.

Anyone with a heart can think back to the moment when injustice slammed you hard into the realization that “this is not the world I want to live in, I want to be a part of something different.”

You signed up for a volunteer gig, made generous donations or maybe even protested for change, circulated petitions and influenced colleagues and friends.

If you are like most of us, that epiphany eventually dimmed and you slipped back into the rhythms of your own existence.