2018 was a banner year for many Louisville-area businesses.

Many of our Business of the Year honorees posted double-digit percentage gains in revenue this year. They added employees, products and services — and some expanded facilities to keep up with growth.

Most of them even found ways to balance that growth while still giving back to their employees and the community — a hallmark of any successful business.

We commend these companies and organizations for their efforts in driving Louisville’s economy and making our city a better place to live and work.

At our annual Business of the Year awards gala on Monday, Dec. 3, we recognized 21 businesses and nonprofits for their overall achievements in 2018.

We also honored Ben Breier, CEO of Kindred Healthcare LLC, with this year’s Excellence in Leadership award for his work in leading strategies that helped reset the clock for Kindred, culminating in the $4.1 billion sale of the company to fellow Louisville-based health care company Humana Inc. and private-equity firms TPG Capital and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe.

You can read an extended interview with Breier here. Check out the attached gallery for more details on our Business of the Year winners and finalists, and look for our special Business of the Year section inside the Dec. 7 weekly edition of Louisville Business First.

The process for selecting our 2018 honorees began with our readers, who nominated companies and nonprofits they believed achieved excellence this year.

From those entries, a panel of Louisville Business First staff members examined the applications and narrowed down finalists by annual revenue in each of five categories — very large companies; large companies; medium companies; small companies; and nonprofits (which are not ranked by revenue).

Finally, an independent panel of judges — Gill Holland, Alice Houston, Dr. O. Wayne Mortenson and Sue Stout Tamme — selected our winners from that group of finalists.

While we congratulate all of our Business of the Year honorees, we also would like to thank our sponsors who made this awards program possible: Liquor Barn, Stites & Harbison PLLC and Stock Yards Bank & Trust Co.

We also thank our television partner on this project, WHAS-TV, for producing the videos of the finalists that were shown at our awards dinner.