bestofnetwork, Author at Best of SLC

2021 Best of SLC Ballots Are In

bestofnetwork on May 13, 2021

Ballots for the 2021 Best of SLC Awards are in, and you folks knocked it out of the park. Both the number of votes and the number of unique voters appear to be records for the whole state!

The businesses and attractions that were up for voting in their respective categories were nominated by Salt Lake residents in March. Those that received enough nominations earned their spots on the ballot.

Tens of thousands of votes were cast to show support for businesses and attractions in our community. We were overwhelmed with the enthusiastic response and can’t wait to share the finalists of each category.

What Happens Now

We want the Best of SLC Awards to be as fair as possible, so our team is working hard to calculate the results and verify the findings. We use a scoring system that relies on a combination of votes from Salt Lake area residents and reviews from Google.

Count Votes

Who had the most votes? Most business awards are prone to spamming, duplicate votes, or cheating. Best of SLC only counts unique votes for each category, and we use text message verification for each ballot. While technology makes counting easy, we still need to verify the results.

BBB Review

The Best of SLC has partnered with the Better Business Bureau to certify our finalists. The top vote-getters must also have a passing grade with the BBB in order to become a finalist. Their rating system utilizes a grading scale just like you used in school, going from an A+ down to an F, graded on 17 different factors. This rating represents a business’s overall trustworthiness and their good-faith efforts to address customer concerns.

Count Reviews

The Best of SLC isn’t like most “Best of” contests, which simply count votes. We realize that the community has already been showing their support for the “best” by leaving reviews all year long, so we’re going to count every 5-star review published on Google within the last 12 months.

Calculate Score

While votes and reviews signify great work in the last year, overall ratings tell us how nominees have done long term. The mean rating from these platforms will be used in conjunction with 5-star reviews and votes to determine the winners.

Number of Votes + (Number of 5-star Reviews x Average Rating) = Score

Announce Finalists

The top nominees of each category will be publicly announced next week once we’ve verified our results. Finalists will also be notified by letter and email as soon as possible.

Announce Winners

Winners will be announced at the Best of SLC Awards Banquet* on June 15th-16th, 2021. Finalists will be invited to purchase tickets for the celebration. The banquet includes a red carpet entrance, a fancy dinner, photos, and other special prizes and opportunities.

*Banquet details might change because of COVID and all of that.

Thank You

We’re grateful to everyone for the support and participation in this year’s Best of SLC Awards. It’s been a lot of fun, and we’re already looking forward to next year’s contest!

2021 Best of SLC Voting is Now Open

bestofnetwork on April 26, 2021

The Best of SLC™ is back for another year to recognize the best businesses in the community. The awards include over 200 individual categories, and uses a combination of 5-star reviews, online ratings, and community votes to determine the winners of each respective category.

Our nominees were selected by Salt Lake County residents in March, and the top ten of each category are moving on to the voting round. Voting takes place online from April 26th, 2021 through May 12th, 2021. Anyone with an SLC area zip code and mobile phone can vote.

When voters register their ballots, a confirmation code will be sent via text message. Enter the code to finalize and submit your votes.

While you can only vote once for each category, feel free to come back during the voting period to support your favorites in the dozens of other categories available.

Don’t Miss the Hump Day Giveaway!

We’re continuing our popular Hump Day Giveaway during the voting period. For every new voter you refer after registering your ballot, you’ll be entered into a weekly drawing for a nice prize. We’ve got a new prize every week while voting is open, and they are fantastic.

Details about the Hump Day Giveaway are available on the voting page.

When Will We Know the Results?

After voting closes on May 12th, we’ll announce the finalists (the top 3 in each category) as soon as we have confirmed the votes and vetted our list with the BBB. But that’s not where it ends!

In addition to votes, the winner of each category is also determined by their online reviews from Google. Overall ratings and the number of 5-star reviews from the previous 12 months are counted. Our team will take a little time to confirm the review scores for each finalist and tally that with the vote total.

Once the final scores have been determined, we’ll announce the winners at the Best of SLC™ Awards Banquet first before publishing them online. The banquet is slated for two nights on June 15th-16th, though we’ll keep you updated in case anything changes.
For more details about the 2021 Best of SLC™, see our awards details page.

Hair Dressing, Not Hair Guessing

bestofnetwork on December 16, 2020

As much as they loved him, when their own son asked to join the teaching staff at COLLECTIV Hair Dressing Academy upon finishing his hairdresser training, Kenny and Lenore Gibson turned him down!

They insisted he obtain plenty of experience as an elite hairdresser before he could have the opportunity to teach at the school the husband-and-wife team founded.

This is one of the reasons you’ll feel an air of legitimacy when you step inside COLLECTIVE Hairdressing Academy. They are the real deal. The students are eager and driven; the instructors are confident and experienced. No nepotism here!

The TONI&GUY Years

When the world-famous salon TONI&GUY (headquartered in London) was opening their first location outside of Europe in Dallas, Kenny and Lenore joined the team that led the way.

During their years with TONI&GUY, the Gibsons helped them grow from a couple of salons to 80 in North America. They also became partners and started the company’s first franchise hairdressing academy.

All the while, they trained and retrained expert hairdressers around the globe.

Calling Salt Lake City Home

After their initial success, the Gibsons ventured out on their own to create another opportunity. They founded COLLECTIV Hairdressing Academy, Salt Lake’s premier cosmetology and barbering school.

While they are the new kids on the block, the Gibsons are as expert and experienced as they come. The academy itself is very modern, with custom-made equipment and workstations. They understand that hairdressing and teaching hairdressing are two different skills, and their instructors must be masters of both — no exceptions.

I have never spoken to business owners as passionate about their work as they are. Even after doing it all, they are still excited about doing it all again with COLLECTIV Hairdressing Academy.

How to Truly Attend Your Own Event

bestofnetwork on September 11, 2020

It’s ironic that one of the happiest days in a person’s life can also be the most stressful. For weddings (and other big events), the people with the greatest cause for celebration are often so busy that they are unable to truly celebrate!

“When we started catering, weddings were especially a challenge. We’d talk to the families afterward and they often didn’t enjoy the experience, even if the food was exquisite,” said Kelly Christensen of Caley’s Catering & Events. “They’d be up all night preparing or breaking down, too tired to go to the reception, and just too busy to enjoy the wedding.”

The Turning Point

In an attempt to lighten the load for one bride’s parents, Kelly picked up the mic to handle announcements and keep things organized. Their response? “Oh, I feel so relieved!”

At that moment, Kelly and his cofounder, Caley, realized the direction in which they needed to shift their business. They were to expand beyond just providing delicious food by becoming the one-stop shop for life’s special occasions.

In the Same Boat as You!

Since their first events 24 years ago, Caley’s Catering has had many opportunities to sample their own wares, including Kelly and Caley’s oldest daughter getting married. Kelly approached their team and had them use the same process for his family as they would a regular customer.

He said, “As parents, we didn’t have to do anything!” They were able to take a hands-off approach to planning, while the rest of the team orchestrated a wedding fit for a Disney princess.

Attend Your Own Event

However, Caley’s is so much more than catering. Even “full service” fails to describe them adequately.

No detail is too small; you might even say they specialize in the little things. There are a thousand details that need to be seen to during a wedding, and Caley’s Catering & Events doesn’t want those details to distract you from the big day. Let them see to the little stuff so that you can attend your own event.

What Makes the Best of SLC the Best?

bestofnetwork on July 24, 2020

No other “best of” contest cares about getting it right as much as Best of SLC does, period. What sets Best of SLC apart is our relentless aim to find and recognize the very best companies and places that SLC 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 Best of SLC, tricksters are unable to manipulate the results!

STEPPING UP OUR GAME

New for the 2020 Best of SLC are two major improvements to last year’s awards:
#1: Text Message Registration
To reduce duplicates, our voting software now utilizes text message verification. This security feature is a great boon to maintaining the integrity of your vote.
#2: 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 Best of SLC, all of which may increase a contestant’s chances of winning:

Nominations
January 20–31, 2020 — We launched by opening up the nominations to anyone living in the Salt Lake Valley. Word spread quickly and in just 11 days we saw many more nominations than last year pour in from all over SLC.
Voting
March 16–April 24, 2020 — 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 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 finalists in each category.
Reviews
April 25, 2019 to April 24, 2020 — In reality, the contest started before it even started! We counted the reviews and ratings for each finalist from the previous twelve calendar months.
Announcing the Winners
June 4, 2020 — Once all the data was in, we added the vote total to the review score for each finalist. This final score determined the winners.
2020 has been challenging for businesses in SLC and around the globe. Many of you have made drastic changes and sacrifices in an effort to help our community make it through the COVID-19 epidemic.
Our team at the Best of SLC was very excited to honor this year’s winners at our banquet, which was postponed (twice) and finally cancelled when it was clear that health restrictions would make it impossible to do. Rest assured, we intend to make it up to you next time by throwing the Best Banquet in SLC ever!

2020 Best of SLC Results

bestofnetwork on June 4, 2020

You did it, Salt Lake residents! It may have taken a little longer than expected, and we may have had to cancel the banquet (twice) — but the long-awaited results for the 2020 Best of SLC are here!

We received tens of thousands of votes to find the best businesses and attractions in Salt Lake County. The Better Business Bureau vetted the finalists while our team counted hundreds of thousands of reviews to calculate the winners.

The Best of SLC finalists received 176,241 5-star Reviews in the last year.

Now the plan was to announce the results at our fancy and fun Best of SLC Awards Banquet the first week of May; you might be aware that something happened that made that impossible. Plan B was to hold the banquet on June 4th, but that didn’t work either.

While we had to forego the ceremony this year, we can all still celebrate our community and the incredible businesses that are part of it.

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Tip Your Hat to these Best of SLC All-Stars

What Do We Do Now?

Share that victory with your customers with a shiny new plaque…

Once again, this year’s award plaques are available for sale to ALL FINALISTS. The deadline to order is June 26th, so be sure you don’t miss out!

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…and share it with new customers in the Best of SLC Magazine!

You’ll get exposure to 10,000 affluent households and local businesses PLUS boost your association with the Best of SLC. The magazine is sure to give you and your company positive exposure throughout 2020!

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Thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s awards!

Best of SLC Presents Your 2020 Finalists!

bestofnetwork on May 11, 2020

After reviewing approximately a gazillion (give or take a little) votes cast for the 2020 Best of SLC nominees, we’re happy to announce the finalists for each category. Since voting ended on April 24th, we’ve been hard at work confirming the results.

This year, votes were cast with ballots secured through text message verification, and the finalists were vetted by the Better Business Bureau. We’re confident that these rock-solid results represent the Best of SLC.

When Will the Winners be Announced?

We’re almost there! While the top vote-getters move on as finalists, votes alone aren’t enough to take home the gold. We’re tabulating the number of 5-star reviews from the last year and the ratings for each finalist. We expect to be able to announce the 2020 Best of SLC winners the first week of June.

Votes + 5-star Reviews + Review Rating = Final Score

Congratulations to all of our finalists for the 2020 Best of SLC Awards!

2020 Best of SLC Ballots Are In!

bestofnetwork on April 25, 2020

Ballots for the 2020 Best of SLC^TM are in, and it looks to be a phenomenal success. The businesses and attractions that were up for voting in their respective categories were nominated by Salt Lake residents in March and April. Those that received enough nominations earned their spots on the ballot.

What Happens Now

We want the Best of SLC^TM Awards to be as fair as possible, so our team is working hard to calculate the results and verify the findings. We use a scoring system that relies on a combination of votes and reviews from Google and Yelp.

Count Ballots

Who had the most votes? Other contests are prone to spamming, duplicate votes, or cheating. Best of SLC^TM only counts unique votes for each category. This year we stepped up our game by using text message verification for each ballot. While technology makes counting easy, we still need to verify the results.

Check with the BBB

The Best of SLC^TM has partnered with the Better Business Bureau to certify our finalists. The top vote-getters must also not have a negative grade with the BBB in order to become a finalist (no rating is still okay). Their rating system utilizes a grading scale just like you used in school, going from an A+ down to an F, graded on 17 different factors. This rating represents a business’s overall trustworthiness and their good-faith efforts to address customer concerns.

Count Reviews

The Best of SLC^TM isn’t like most “Best of” contests, which simply count votes. We realize that the community has already been showing their support for the “best” by leaving reviews all year long, so we’re going to count every 5-star review published on Google and Yelp within the last 12 months.

*Events of the last 2 months have meant that many reviews left haven’t yet been posted to Google. We won’t lock in the results until we’re sure that every review has been counted.

Calculate Score

While votes and reviews signify great work in the last year, overall ratings on Google and Yelp tell us how nominees have done long term. The mean rating from these platforms will be used in conjunction with 5-star reviews and votes to determine the winners.

Number of Votes + Number of 5-star Reviews + Average Rating = Score

Announce Finalists

The top nominees of each category will be publicly announced next week once we’ve verified our results. Finalists will also be notified by letter and email as soon as possible.

Announce Winners

Winners will be announced at the Best of SLC^TM Awards Banquet on June 4th, 2020*. Finalists will be invited to purchase tickets for the celebration. The banquet includes a red carpet entrance, a fancy dinner, photos, and other special prizes and opportunities.

*Banquet date is subject to change due to recent events

Thank You

We’re grateful to everyone for the support and participation in this year’s Best of SLC^TM awards. It’s been a lot of fun, and we’re already looking forward to next year’s contest!

2020 Best of SLC Keeps on Rollin’

bestofnetwork on April 3, 2020

Voting for the 2020 Best of SLC^TM opened on March 16th, and the results have been fantastic. Tens of thousands of votes have poured in, confirming the Best of SLC^TM as the most popular business awards in the state.

But you ain’t seen nothin’, yet.

It seems no amount of votes can satiate our contest overlord (pictured above), so for this and other reasons we are extending the voting period through April 24th, 2020.

Voting Ends April 24th, 2020

It’s been a tough few weeks for just about everyone. Social distancing has obviously resulted in some sudden changes to the state of business in Salt Lake, as everyone takes measures to limit the spread of It Which Must Not Be Named.

But nothing is stopping community residents from voicing their opinions, something that can easily be done from the comfort of home. We’ve already got a ton of momentum, so please keep the votes and reviews coming. Our local businesses need your support now more than ever!

Mark Your Calendars for June 4th, 2020

You know what sounds great after a month or two of sheltering in place? Getting out of the house for a fun night of gourmet food, entertainment, and awards. The Best of SLC^TM Awards Banquet is THE event where we’ll announce the winners of this year’s competition.

The banquet is to be held June 4th, 2020, so get the mothballs out of those penguin suits and pull those glittery dresses out of the closet.

Hump Day Giveaway

New for 2020, we have been doing a weekly contest we’re calling the Hump Day Giveaway. For every new voter you refer after registering your own ballot (through the on-page link), you’ll be entered into a drawing for a great prize!

Already voted? That’s fine — while your vote only counts once for each category, you’re welcome to come back and vote for any of the dozens of other categories.

Our Hump Day Giveaway Winners Thus Far…

Snider Bros. Meats generously donated a tasty meat bundle worth $218.85! The prize includes their Four of a Kind Package (6 lbs each of top sirloin steak, pork chops, boneless chicken breast, and lean ground beef), aprons, and a full selection of sauces and rubs. This incredible package was won by Natalie N.

Robyn C. of West Valley City was the lucky winner of a Premier Couples Massage Package (valued at $218), compliments of Spavia.

The Stern Team provided a $250 gift card to Ruth’s Chris Steak House, which was won by Casey E. This is the same restaurant that won both Best Fine Dining and Best Steak in last year’s Best of SLC^TM Awards.

Stephanie D. was the big winner of a HydraFacial + Botox package from Utah Facial Plastics, last year’s Best of SLC in Plastic Surgery.

We have a fantastic prize coming every week until voting ends. So, let’s continue the momentum and recognize the best companies and places that SLC has to offer!

The BBB Supports SLC

bestofnetwork on February 14, 2020

We’re very pleased to announce our new partnership with the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Who better to partner with than the non-profit organization that’s been looking out for consumers since 1912?

Behind the scenes, our team at Inbound Systems is constantly working to find the best ways to identify and recognize the top businesses and organizations in Utah. This often involves long hours, heated debates, and the occasional Greco-Roman wrestling match to settle an argument. 😉

Two Peas in a Pod

We want to ensure the best possible outcome for the Best of SLC, which is why an exclusive partnership with the BBB made sense. The Better Business Bureau’s mission to improve marketplace trust makes them a perfect partner for us.

After all, the Better Business Bureau is one of America’s most enduring customer protection organizations. For more than 100 years, the Better Business Bureau has been helping people find businesses, brands and charities they can trust. BBB sets standards for ethical business behavior and monitors compliance. That’s why in the past year alone, people have turned to them more than 173 million times!

The BBB Rating System

The modern rating system utilizes a grading scale just like you used in school, going from an A+ down to an F, graded on 17 different factors. This rating represents a business’s overall trustworthiness and their good-faith efforts to address customer concerns.

If you’d like to see how your business stacks up, you can check your rating on your BBB page.

Formula for Winning

New for our 2020 contest, we will be incorporating BBB ratings into scoring. Winners are still determined mathematically by a combination of votes, reviews, and ratings, but standing within the BBB is now an important factor in online ratings. We believe that this will help ensure that only the best businesses can win Best of SLC™.

For example, those businesses that have very low BBB ratings, government actions or penalties, and a historical pattern of unresolved disputes will have a tough time proving they’re the best in Salt Lake County.

Still Free

The Best of SLC is not a pay-to-play contest. While the BBB offers accreditation and operates through the funding of dues-paying members, accreditation will not be a factor in or influence the results of scoring. To learn more about what’s needed to win, visit our 2020 Contest page.

For more information about the Better Business Bureau serving our area, visit their website or call (801) 336-1526. Our team is very excited about this new partnership and what it means for making the most popular “Best of” contest in Utah even best-ier!