Best of the Best WHAT A YEAR!

Megan Keller Advertising Director

2020: the year no one will forget. As COVID 19 swept across our nation, no one truly knew what was going to happen. Many businesses immediately began to struggle, some did not make it, and we watched as many doors were closed and windows boarded up.

We all watched and wondered, what’s next. It started with COVID 19, then to the protests, political rallies were ramping up and to toss in the mix should we go out into public or stay home — what do we do?

Working for the Duluth News Tribune, we had front-row seats to it all. One wonderful change we saw was the business community began hosting virtual events, working hard to stay connected. It is amazing how well and how fast people adapted to this “new normal,” as they call it. Virtual events became fun, and video conferences were bombed by family, children and pets, with internet connections freezing at the most inopportune time. The world kept spinning and we kept moving forward. This year, I had already hosted a couple virtual celebrations that were supposed to happen in person.

The 4th Annual Best of the Best was next on the table for me to decide if I proceed or not. I will admit, I was nervous. However, I thought to myself, “With everything going on today, I think our communities need a fun change and something to work hard at and look forward to.”

So, I took the leap and we sent out our notices to the public about what was happening. We received so many happy messages from the community thanking us for this. Last year, we hosted an in-person celebration — our first, in fact. We had live music, food and beverage stations. The place was packed!

This year, we did our best to please all who participated in our contest. I saw businesses work harder than they ever had to make the final rounds. Our businesses truly needed this.

This year, we had 47,054 nominations and 165,743 votes created by 13,449 people. These results are huge! Thank you everyone for participating!

For our celebration, Alex Comstock, owner of Comstock Creative, and I went out and interviewed a variety of businesses who have gone above and beyond in our contests year after year. Getting to know their businesses and learn how this contest has impacted them makes all our efforts worthwhile.

If you missed out on our virtual celebration, you can find that at duluthnews.com in a slider at the bottom of the page.

Congratulations to everyone who was nominated for Best of the Best, and congratulations to all of our winners! First-place awards can be picked up at Harley Davidson Sport Center, 4355 Stebner Road, Duluth, on Sept. 16 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Second-place certificates will be mailed.