Best of Black Business (Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder): How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Best of Black Business contest, and who runs it?

The Best of Black Business program turns community input into awards for Black-owned businesses, and the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder runs it. The newspaper presents the contest together with Sister Spokesman, and the entire event unfolds on the newsroom's website instead of through an outside polling vendor, so the contest page doubles as the ballot, the rules sheet and the announcements board.

For supporters, that hosting choice concentrates everything at one address, spokesman-recorder.com/best-black-owned-businesses/: nominations, the 2026 finalist announcement, community voting and the eventual results all live there. There is no separate app to install and no outside brand attached to the vote. Even the technology underneath stays in the newspaper's hands, since the site's own footer credits Newspack as the publishing platform behind the masthead.

Among Minnesota reader-choice ballots, this one stands apart for its focus: Black-owned businesses serving the Twin Cities and communities across the state.

Which editions are confirmed, and what are the 2026 dates?

The confirmed run and the current calendar

Confirmed editions cover 2025 and 2026. When nominations opened for the current cycle, the newspaper described the launch as its Second Annual Best of Black Business Awards, which pins down the annual rhythm: 2025 came first, and 2026 is the second run.

The 2026 calendar carries three published stages, laid out below. Each stage hands off to the next: the June pool becomes the finalist list, the summer vote settles the ordering, and October turns the result into the awards event. Both the contest page and the separate rules sheet the newspaper posted for 2026 print these windows, so a supporter checking either address sees the same June and summer spans.

A dedicated finalists announcement for 2026, published on the site in July, gives supporters a named list to work from going into the summer vote rather than a blank ballot.

Prize details, the program for the October celebration, and any word on a 2027 edition are likewise absent from what the newspaper has put out so far.

How does a supporter actually cast a vote?

The literal voting mechanic

During the community voting stage, a supporter visits the contest page, looks through the finalist listings, chooses a favorite in a category and submits the pick with a valid email address. The rules are explicit that voters may cast one vote per category per day, which means a single supporter can back several different businesses across several categories on the same day, then return and do it again tomorrow.

The newspaper spells these terms out on a standalone rules page it posted for the 2026 edition, alongside the voting window itself. They tie the vote to a valid email address and stop there: no additional account setup is described, and nothing appears about device or browser restrictions, so the practical ceiling on any one supporter is the daily per-category limit paired with whatever the live form asks for.

Anyone who missed the June nomination stage cannot add a business to the ballot mid-summer; the finalist pool closed when nominations ended on June 30.

How does this ballot sit beside Minnesota's other community contests?

This program is one of seven Minnesota community contests covered here. Alongside it sit Best of the Midwest, Minnesota's Best, Best of the Best Brainerd Lakes Area and Best of the Best from the Duluth News Tribune, plus CommunityVotes Duluth and CommunityVotes Rochester.

Three differences set this program apart. Scope: the Brainerd Lakes, Duluth and Rochester ballots serve their own cities and regions, while this one follows a business community spread across the Twin Cities and the state. Host: the others run through dedicated voting platforms, while the Spokesman-Recorder keeps its ballot on its own newsroom domain. Shape: most reader ballots go straight to voting, while this one inserts a June nomination round before any vote is cast, then closes with an October awards celebration rather than a simple published list, stretching the calendar from early June into autumn.

Where a city ballot asks you to rank familiar local institutions, this one asks you to know and back a business community directly. For a reader weighing where to take part, the practical consequence is that this contest's rules, dates and finalist lists all trace back to one Minnesota newsroom.

How can a nominee build steady support through the window?

The rules themselves define what moves a nominee up. With one vote allowed per category per day, steady participation beats a single blast: a business whose customers return day after day through the summer window compounds support in a way a one-time social post cannot. Because every vote requires a valid email address, direct channels such as customer newsletters and point-of-sale reminders reach the people who can actually act.

The stretch a campaign has to plan for runs from the opening of nominations at the start of June through the August close of voting, so preparation over that full arc matters more than a late scramble.

Getting onto the ballot at all depended on the June nomination stage, so visibility work ahead of a future cycle starts a month before any voting begins.

The published rules say nothing about votes arranged through outside services, and this page makes no promise about what any purchase achieves. For background on how campaigns around community ballots grow their counts, see getting more votes online.