Tribune Readers Choice Food Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Tribune Readers Choice Food Awards is and who runs it

The Tribune Readers Choice Food Awards is the Chicago Tribune's readers choice ballot for food and drink in Illinois. The publication runs the program on the Second Street platform, under its own tenant at chicagotribune.secondstreetapp.com, and the confirmed ballot address for the 2024 cycle is https://chicagotribune.secondstreetapp.com/2024-Tribune-Readers-Choice-Food-Awards/. A gallery page for the same program exists at chicagotribune.secondstreetapp.com/2024-Tribune-Readers-Choice-Food-Awards/gallery/.

The ballot covers the state's dining scene broadly. The Tribune's page text invites readers to vote for "your favorite restaurants, bars, breweries, tacos, pizza and more in the Tribune's 2024 Food Awards", under the headline instruction "You be the critic!". That wording frames the whole vertical: it is a best-of readers choice program, judged entirely by the public rather than by a panel.

Facts at a glance

The dated record: editions, the 2025 window and what is unpublished

Four confirmed edition years belong to this program: 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, one ballot per year. The Tribune's own coverage adds depth to that run: it describes the awards as the 15th annual Tribune Food Awards and traces the readers choice franchise "since the inception of these awards in 2011". Taken together, this is a long running annual program, not a newcomer.

The 2025 voting round is the cycle with printed dates. It opened on January 24, 2025, and the Tribune stated that "the voting period ends at 11:59 p.m. Feb. 7 and winners will be announced March 5." So the round ran roughly two weeks, with an announcement date published alongside the close.

What the Tribune has not printed on its ballot pages is a category roster, so the exact slate of readers choice groups is something supporters should confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The same pages carry no rules text on a vote cap, on one-vote-per-day enforcement or on nominee eligibility, and no separate platform round dates are published beyond the window above.

How a supporter votes on the Tribune Food Awards ballot today

Voting works as a straightforward public pick on Second Street, the platform hosting the Tribune's food awards form. A reader opens the ballot at chicagotribune.secondstreetapp.com, works through the food and drink slate, picks a favorite finalist in each group and submits. The Tribune's page text sets the tone with "You be the critic!", and its coverage of the 2025 round tells readers exactly what to expect from the form.

Two instructions from the Tribune matter for anyone voting. First, "Readers can vote daily for their favorite finalists below (refresh the page if the voting box doesn't appear) or go to chicagotribune.com/FoodAwards2024." That gives supporters a daily return as the core habit and a fallback address if the embedded box misbehaves. Second, the 2025 window ran to 11:59 p.m. on February 7, so the daily habit only counts while the round is live.

The ballot page itself does not spell out an account requirement, and it publishes no category roster, so the groups a voter sees are the groups the current form loads. Nothing beyond the vote count is required of a supporter: no nomination letter, no proof of purchase, just a pick and a submit on the Second Street form.

How this ballot sits beside its Illinois neighbours

Illinois readers have several readers choice ballots to choose from, and the Tribune Food Awards is distinct from all of them because it is the only one published by the Chicago Tribune on Second Street. The Chicago Reader runs its own citywide program, Best of Chicago, on a separate ballot with a separate publisher. CommunityVotes runs localized programs for Peoria and Rockford, and the Sauk Valley Favorites ballot covers the Sterling area under its own publisher.

Wedding and building markets sit nearby too. Chicago Style Weddings runs a Best Of ballot for its readers, and the BAGI Parade of Homes carries a People's Choice vote for its parade entries. None of these share a voting pool with the Tribune Food Awards: a vote cast in the Reader's program or a CommunityVotes market stays in that program.

What makes the Tribune ballot stand out is its reach and its history. It is a statewide food and drink franchise from the Chicago Tribune, running annually since the awards' 2011 inception, with confirmed editions 2022 through 2025, and it leans on the newspaper's own audience rather than a chamber or an association membership.

Strengthening support in the Tribune Food Awards

Support in this program is built on the daily return the Tribune itself invites: readers can vote daily for favorite finalists, so a business that reminds its regulars every morning of the window gets a fresh vote from each of them each day. The refresh tip the Tribune prints is worth passing on verbatim, because a stuck voting box on a busy Friday costs real votes.

Because this Tribune food ballot is a public readers choice form with no printed outside help policy, the practical difference between a strong push and an uncertain one comes down to the daily mechanic and the close date, which for the confirmed round was 11:59 p.m. on February 7. Read the wider tactics in how to get more votes online, and if paid support is on the table, the award votes overview explains what that route involves generally, without any promise about how this Tribune ballot would treat it.