No other “best of” contest cares about getting it right as much as Idaho’s Best does, period.
What sets Idaho’s Best apart is our relentless aim to find and recognize the very best companies and places that Idaho has to offer.

We’re able to find the best because we do it differently:

» No pay to play — participation is free.

» You choose the nominees; we don’t.

» Online reviews help determine the winners.

Gone are the days of the glorified popularity contest that allows companies to win with an endless supply of duplicate votes provided by employees. With Idaho’s Best, tricksters are unable to manipulate the results!

STEPPING UP OUR GAME

New for Idaho’s Best of 2020 are three major improvements to last year’s awards:

#1: Text Message Registration
To reduce duplicates, our voting software now utilizes text message verification. After all, how many of us have multiple cell phones?

#2: Statewide but Still Local
In addition to the Treasure Valley, we included two more regions, the Panhandle and Eastern Idaho. Going statewide increased the competition at the regional level while allowing us to offer a new, statewide award.

#3: BBB Partnership
Could a company truly be named the “best” if they’ve lost their accreditation with the Better Business Bureau? No, and neither should companies with negative BBB ratings.

Thanks to our local BBB office, which provided access to its expansive company data, we were able to filter out those that came up short.

HOW IT WORKS

There are three stages to Idaho’s Best, all of which may increase a contestant’s chances of winning:

Nominations
September 3–13, 2019 — We launched by opening up the nominations to anyone living in Idaho. Word spread quickly and in just 10 days we saw many more nominations than last year pour in from all over Idaho.

Voting
October 14–31, 2019 — After determining the top nominees in each category, we opened up the voting round with our new software. We had a few initial bumps, but we soon settled in and received even more votes per day than last year’s contest.

Nominees didn’t mess around either. Many got the word out to their customers on social media. Some hung banners and window clings to attract the vote. In the end, we came away with the top three to five finalists in each category.

Reviews
November 1, 2018 to October 31, 2019 — In reality, the contest started before it even started! We counted the reviews and ratings for each finalist from the previous twelve calendar months.

PRESENTING THE AWARDS

Because of this year’s changes, making it as a finalist was much more difficult for our nominees. So, making it as a finalist ended up being quite the accomplishment!

Once all the data was in, we added the vote total to the review score for each finalist. This final score determined the winners.
In their honor, we held an awards banquet (see page 8) in downtown Boise on the evenings of December 3–4.