Nearly a decade ago when we started our Michigan’s Best contests, we took the lead from our readers. We asked them to nominate their favorite places to dig into a pizza, grab a hand-pattied burger with a side of hot and salty fries, or sample the best craft beer and boutique-style wines.
Now we’re happy to say we’ve put our readers front and center, letting them be the guides as we expanded our search not just for the best places to eat and drink, but favorite retail businesses, contractors and even the best campgrounds and music venues.
Our first-ever Reader’s Choice contest, run by our sales and marketing team at MLive Media Group, brought in nearly 10,000 nominations when it launched earlier this year. Those top nominations were then placed into polls, and our readers were asked to vote for their favorites across a broad range of categories.
More than 29,600 votes were cast for winners and finalists across three regions in our state: West Michigan, as well as Northeast and Southeast Michigan.
Anne Drummond, director of Creative Advertising Sales for MLive Media Group, said it was easy to see how excited readers were about the self-directed contest, as underscored by the final vote tally.
“Michigan’s Best has performed searches for a long time, always concentrating on a type of food, destination, or kind of restaurant. But we didn’t have something that cast off the constraints of these narrow categories, allowing for more industries and businesses to participate. Reader’s Choice emerged as the answer,” she said. “It was clear early on that our readers were excited about the project. We had just shy of 10,000 nominations across the three regional ballots.”
“The amount of excitement from area businesses was impressive! Our team fielded questions, requests, and communications every day of the program.”
An "E" is marked the tables at Erratic Ale Co. at 8080 Grand St. in Dexter. The microbrewery site was previously a factory since the 1940s in downtown Dexter. Nicole Hester/Mlive.com
In each region, every Reader’s Choice category had a winner, as well as some top finalists, which were all determined by readers’ votes.
See a complete list of the winners here.
Some of the winners will be familiar to a lot of our readers. For example, here are the Best Romantic Restaurant Spot winners across each region:
West Michigan: Amore Trattoria Italiana
Northeast Michigan: The Laundry
Southeast Michigan: The Earle Restaurant
Similarly, readers will recognize some of the Best Bar winners as a place they also like to grab a beer or cocktail in their area, as selected by their friends and neighbors who cast their Reader’s Choice votes:
West Michigan: New Holland Brewing Company
Northeast Michigan: Soggy Bottom Bar
Southeast Michigan: Erratic Ale Company
The breadth of the contest categories as well as the reader-driven polling features made it fun for people to vote for their favorite places and even their favorite people. For example, the Fitness & Sports category not only invited readers to vote their picks for the best golf course, bike shop and gym, but also the best personal trainer and even outdoor outfitter shop.
“The nature of the ballots - being fully crowd-sourced - has generated palpable excitement from our MLive Team,” Drummond said. “Not only did this give us a chance to hear from our most engaged readers but also to get their real opinions about noteworthy businesses around the state. Particularly now, after a year and a half of feeling confined, the idea of lifting up strong, lasting businesses in Michigan is really rewarding.”
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November 14, 2021 at 10:30PM
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Michigan’s Best Reader’s Choice Awards: See all the winners, top spots, hometown favorites - MLive.com
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