A fourth-generation Denver food distributor that has supplied buns to McDonald's restaurants across the Rocky Mountains for nearly seven decades will pay $1.5 million to settle a federal lawsuit accusing its top executive of ordering staff not to hire Black, female, and Afghan job applicants. Mile Hi Foods Co., headquartered on East 51st Avenue in Northern Denver, reached the settlement without admitting it broke any law, even as court filings describe a handwritten note from the company's chief operating executive instructing staff to cap the percentage of Black hires because he considered them lazy.
According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the same executive also directed employees to stop hiring women for warehouse jobs and to cut off hiring of Afghan applicants in the company's bakery. The federal agency filed suit in September 2024 after conciliation efforts failed, and as The Denver Post reports, the company has now agreed to pay $600,000 directly to the human resources manager it allegedly fired for opposing the discriminatory directives, plus an undetermined additional amount to the Black, female, and Afghan applicants it did not hire.
Court records identify that fired HR manager as Marianne Apodaca, who filed her own intervenor lawsuit against Mile Hi Foods and its affiliated entities, alleging she faced retaliatory harassment and discharge after raising legal objections to company executives, per the same federal court record. A consent decree resolved the case, closing out litigation that began nearly two years earlier under case number 1:24-cv-02703.
A Consent Decree With Teeth
Mile Hi Foods maintains in its August consent decree that it did not violate the Civil Rights Act or any federal, state, or local law, framing the payout as a way to avoid further litigation costs rather than an admission of wrongdoing, the Post's reporting notes. Still, the terms imposed on the company are extensive: Mile Hi must hire an outside consultant to evaluate and rewrite its hiring policies, train all employees on anti-discrimination laws, maintain detailed applicant records, and submit annual compliance reports to federal regulators for three years — a period that can be extended if the company falls short of the decree's conditions.
Mary Jo O'Neill, representing the EEOC in the case, said federal law prohibits retaliation against workers who refuse to participate in unlawful discrimination and that no employer may refuse to hire qualified individuals because of their sex, race, or national origin, according to the Post. The company's chief operating executive has not been named in reporting on the case.
A Company Built On Denver's Food Supply Chain
Mile Hi's roots run deep in Denver. The company traces its origins to 1901, when founder Michael Taddonio sold produce from a wagon around the city, according to Mile Hi Companies. The business grew over time, and Mile Hi Fruit & Vegetable Company was founded in 1946. Mile Hi partnered with Denver's first McDonald's by supplying potatoes, and today serves QSR partners while Mile Hi Bakery bakes buns. Today it remains a fourth-generation, family-owned enterprise under the Taddonio family, operating a LEED Gold-certified bakery alongside its warehousing and transportation divisions.
The Taddonio family also runs a charitable arm, the Taddonio Family Foundation, which focuses on organizations that improve children's lives. That community profile now sits alongside a growing list of legal headaches. Mile Hi Foods separately agreed to a $400,000 class-action settlement in late 2025 tied to a September 2024 cyberattack that exposed current and former employees' Social Security numbers and personal data, according to Claim Depot, with affected workers given until January 2026 to file reimbursement claims.
Part Of A Broader Federal Push In Denver
The case adds to a run of Title VII enforcement actions against Denver-area food and hospitality employers. Hoodline previously reported on a separate EEOC suit filed against airport catering firm Gate Gourmet in August, which alleged the company ignored sexual harassment reports and retaliated against a female employee who complained, following an administrative investigation opened in late 2023. Together, the cases suggest the EEOC's Phoenix District Office, which enforces Title VII across Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and parts of New Mexico, is keeping close watch on the region's food service sector.
For now, the Mile Hi settlement closes a legal chapter that began with a single handwritten note but stretched into a two-year federal case touching hiring practices, retaliation claims, and a company whose name has been tied to Denver's food supply chain for more than a century.
