Groundspeak Portal

When I walked into my favorite grocery store last night, I noticed a sticker "Voted best of M... 2009".

I know, many towns have local newspapers that do those annual surveys for everything from the best pizza place to the best barber shop. And usually they also hand out little plaques or diplomas. This would be a chance to put some hard working people in your home town on the map.

Qualifyer would either be a copy of the newspaper vote (online or scanned) or a picture of the plaque in the store.

Les us know what you think.

I like the idea of some indicator of quality, but I'm not sure how widespread the idea is.

I'm assuming that the "M" in your quote is for Monterey (although I see you're from Manteca so I could be wrong on that count), which I know you visit on occasion.  To be honest, the weekly Monterey Coastal newspaper is the only public poll that I've heard of that does this sort of thing and issues plaques to the "Best of..." in the area (I believe there is upwards of 100 different categories to vote for).

BTW, my workplace has won "Best Place to Work" for two years in a row now 8)

The M... actually stands for both, my old home town Monterey (1994-2005) and my new (since 2005) home town Manteca. Both towns do that kind of thing every years and since these are the only two US-american towns I have lived in, my sample is a little small.

However, I don't believe that these are the only two towns in America, doing this survey. Here is what the first 100 google hits, searching for "voted best of" brought:

San Francisco, CA - Glendale, CA - Rockford, IL, Columbus, OH - Baltimore, MD - Long Island, NY - Boise, ID - Pleasanton, CA - Boston, MA

Seems to me like there is enough, but I'd like to hear from more members first.

Burlington, VT and Manchester, NH both have this. Merchants usually display these prominently on-site and in their advertising.
In Burlington, Ben and Jerry received one of these while still just two bohemians working out of a 'barely renovated' former gas station - I worked at the restaurant that existed right next door (Carbur's). Now the restaurant is closed, the gas station is gone, the plaque that marked the gas station location is stolen...lets see, what was the question?

Here in NC, some towns do this, and other regions do this.  So instead of "Best of Raleigh" you get "Best of the Triangle", which is what that area is called. 

I don't know yet how I feel about this for Waymarking though.  What these places are voted the best of seems pretty widespread.  My good friend works at what was just voted the "Best CPA firm in the Triangle" or something like that, and a family-friend's restaurant won "Best Sweet Tea in the Triad" (the Triad is different region from the Triangle).  So in my mind, the category would be filled with all sorts of everything establishments, and I'm not sure that I like that. 

Funny I had a milkshake at a places that was voted best burgers. I got a photo of the plaque too.

Funny, I worked for a small company that displayed several of these "voted best of" plaques, but I'm not sure where they came from, who voted, or what. Didn't mean much as far as I could tell - except that we really were the best!

Sometimes these types of plaques are awarded by the parent company to a store, or by the Chamber of Commerce.  Let's face it, in the U.S., at least, there is an award-happy attitude that will hand out things left and right.  Is there any way to filter out the chaff on this one?