Happy Birthday, Best of the West, and welcome to the double digits!

That’s right, it’s been 10 years of Revue’s annual readers survey, where the people of West Michigan choose their favorite restaurants, bars, musicians, attractions, people, artists and so much more.

We’ve gone from a couple thousand voters in the first year to more than 10,000 annually now. We’ve added dozens of categories and taken just as many away. We’ve created a second round of voting to shake things up. We’ve hosted one Best of the West Live, which was booked just a couple months before March 2020, and had to be delayed multiple years. 

And now, over the course of a decade, we’ve had well over 1,000 first-place winners and thousands of top-three finalists—including a few people and places who have won their category every single year. We’re celebrating these unshakeable champions with Milestone Awards this year, and you can of course learn all about those, along with all of this year’s results, our Golden Certificate winners, and a few Staff Picks, in the pages ahead.

To everyone who has taken precious time out of their days to nominate their favs, to vote, to share the contest, to celebrate the winners: Thank you. Hopefully it’s clear by now how much Best of the West actually means to local businesses and people, and let’s be honest, that has nothing to do with Revue. They care because every nomination and win is a show of support from the community, from people like you—a message that someone out there thinks they are The Best of their kind across all of West Michigan. 

So, for as long as you’ll have us, we’ll continue to change things up with Best of the West however we can to celebrate and support the people and places that make West Michigan the special community it is.

'Til next time,

Josh Veal, Managing Editor