Best in the business: winners follow paths of passion, determination to Top Company summit.

• Author: Mumford, Phil
• Position: Company rankings

For entrants and judges alike, the ColoradoBiz Top Company competition is a rigorous journey. Entrants undergo an examination of their financial performance by sponsor Deloitte, and seven judges made up of business and community leaders assess each company's community involvement and one or more operational aspect of the entrants' choice.

The field of several dozen entrants is whittled down to 30 finalists in 10 industries before, finally, the 10 winners are tabbed.

The process sheds light not only on companies' business triumphs and how they got there, but on the thoughtful and often innovative ways in which winning companies have reached back to improve communities and empower employees.

A few examples: Chipotle Mexican Grill's mission to support humane animal-raising practices and promote sustainability with its "Food with Integrity" initiative, McClain Finlon Advertising's pro bono work for local nonprofits; and Statera's bonus program that requires employees to perform community service.

Finalists and winners were honored at an awards luncheon Sept. 12 at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

TOP COMPANY -- RETAIL/WHOLESALE

CHIPOTLE MEXICAN GRILL INC.

Chipotle is known mostly for giant burritos, but beneath that soft tortilla exterior is a company devoted to what it calls "Food with Integrity."

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Among other things, that means a commitment to serving naturally raised meat from humanely reared animals and training managers in food-prep techniques you'd expect to see in an upscale restaurant, not in a fast-food joint. Finally, all that cilantro-chopping, tomato-dicing and avocado-mashing is done in an open kitchen so nothing is hidden from the customer.

"If you think about what Chipotle stands for, it stands for things like quality, trust, transparency, honesty," says founder and CEO Steve Ells. "And those are not things we say; we don't write them down in marketing slogans or things like that, but I think it's the sense that customers get when they come into a Chipotle."

The Denver-based restaurant chain is committed to several community-related causes, including a fundraiser last year in which all the Chipotle restaurants donated proceeds from guacamole sales (about $50,000) to The Land Institute, a nonprofit research and education organization devoted to building ecologically stable agricultural systems. Also last year, all seven Colorado Springs Chipotles held a Military Free Day in which they gave away free burritos, bowls, tacos or salads to anyone with a military ID.

Barely 14 years after Ells opened his first burrito shop on Evans Avenue near the University of Denver campus, the enterprise has grown to more than 600 restaurants nationwide, including 60 in Colorado. (For more on Ells, see page 65).

Along the way, McDonald's invested in the company--$370 million in a seven-year period--giving Chipotle the capital to expand from 18 stores to around 500. In January 2006, Chipotle completed an initial public offering that raised $45 million on its first day of trading. About a year after the IPO, McDonald's sold its interest.

Back in May, Janus Capital analyst Eileen Hoffman surmised in an interview with Kiplinger's magazine that Wall Street analysts were slow to grasp the phenomenon because Chipotles were still new to Manhattan and unfamiliar to those analysts. Not so in Denver, where Hoffman said, "There's a 30-minute wait at lunch time, and you can't build them fast enough."

Seems analysts and the people who listen to them are catching on: The stock price of Chipotle has more than doubled in the past year.

--Mike Taylor

TOP COMPANY -- SERVICES

MCCLAIN FINLON ADVERTISING INC.

Ask Cathey Finlon about the outlook for Denver to attract top talent and she gives you "the long view."

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That kind of thinking has served the founder of McClain Finlon Advertising well since she founded the agency more than 25 years ago.

The Top Company award winner in the services category is the largest independently owned full-service advertising agency in the Rocky Mountain region and is ranked as one of the nation's top 25 independents. In 2006, Adweek recognized McClain Finlon as the fastest growing agency in the United States.

"I think Denver is very poised to attract and does currently attract a fair number of people who come here for a combination of lifestyle factors," Finlon said during an interview at her company's offices in Denver's Ballpark Neighborhood. "Leadership like Mayor Hickenlooper and (Sen.) Ken Salazar, who operate on a national scale, are telling people what it's like to live here."

With a dearth of national companies based here, it's hard for advertising firms to amass a large number of Colorado-based accounts, Finlon said. But Denver and Colorado are gaining more clout with companies and the workforce.

"Taking the long view, we're more poised than ever to really attract smartypants people," said Finlon, whose company's reach extends globally.

You can lump Finlon with the "smartypants people." The native of Latrobe, Pa., had a long career in the art world before joining the advertising field and continues to be actively involved in the arts community.

The art undergraduate major earned a master's degree in English and spent 10 years as a fundraiser for the Philadelphia Museum of Art. After she moved to Colorado nearly 30 years ago with her husband, Richard Finlon, she held a similar position with the Denver Art Museum, on which she currently serves as a board member.

McClain Finlon's nearly 200 employees provide pro bono services to various local nonprofits, including the Denver Scholarship Foundation and the Denver Zoo, the latter for which the agency created the award-winning "Preservation Included with Admission" campaign.

Finlon, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, says she grew up with that service ethic and aimed to instill it into her company.

"I felt I could represent advertising for the good parts of it, a way to show that advertising people are generous in spirit," she says. "I think serving on boards is exerting influence over the world."

--Mike Cote

TOP COMPANY -- TECHNOLOGY/MEDIA/TELECOMMUNICATIONS

STATERA

The name Statera means "balance" in Latin; literally it's the bar that balances on the fulcrum of a scale. Carl Fitch and Brad Weydert founded Statera in 2001, and from the outset, the...