River Valley Reader's Choice: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the River Valley Reader's Choice and who runs it?

River Valley Reader's Choice is a best-of public vote that asks people in Granite Falls, Minnesota to crown the local businesses they rate highest. The program runs under the Best Of banner of Granite Falls News, the community's hometown paper, and every event page closes with a copyright line reading © 2026 CherryRoad Media, Inc., which places the poll inside that publishing company's web operation. There is no outside polling vendor involved: the paper hosts the entire competition itself.

The ballot address is https://bestof.cherryroad.com/event/a4abc12bd403238c, an event page on the publisher's Best Of system. Because the paper controls that system outright, the timeline, the nominee field and the results announcement are all managed in-house rather than delegated to a third-party voting service.

Three traits define the format. It is a public vote, open to the paper's readership. It unfolds in phases, with a nomination stretch that feeds a later voting stretch. And it is fully dated: the 2025 listing printed an explicit timeline marking each stage completed, so supporters can verify the schedule rather than guess at it. Recognition here carries weight precisely because the pool of nominees is limited to one community's establishments.

The essentials

Which editions are confirmed, and what were the 2025 dates?

Two cycles establish the poll's annual rhythm, 2024 and 2025. A single-year program could be a one-off experiment, but a second documented year turns River Valley Reader's Choice into a recurring fixture on the Granite Falls News calendar, and that is how the paper's Best Of section presents it.

The 2025 edition left behind a complete, dated timeline. Nominations opened August 11, 2025 and ran through August 24, 2025, with the stage marked completed. The voting round then took over, stretching from September 15, 2025 to September 28, 2025, likewise marked completed. Winners were announced on December 4, 2025, at which point the whole event was flagged complete. Those markers matter because they come straight from the paper's own accounting, and they hand future supporters a template: late-summer nominations, a September voting stretch, and a results date in early December.

What the published material omits is equally clear. The category slate never appears beside the timeline, so readers cannot see in advance which business types are contested; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Prizes or honors attached to winning are likewise absent from the event summary, and the paper posts no rules document covering eligibility. Supporters planning a campaign should treat the dates above as settled history and the ballot contents as something to check fresh whenever the next edition loads.

How does someone actually vote in this poll?

Participation mirrors the published structure. While the nomination round is live, readers put forward the Granite Falls businesses they believe deserve recognition. After the paper closes that stage and fixes the field, the voting round begins, and the public vote proper happens inside it. In the most recent documented edition that stretch sat entirely within September.

The ballot is a normal page on the paper's Best Of system. A supporter browses the nominee listings, marks the favorite worth recognizing, and submits the choice with the controls shown. Nothing in the event material describes account creation, device restrictions or a per-supporter ceiling, and Granite Falls News does not print a rules block explaining how many ballots one household may cast. Whatever limits apply are enforced on the ballot page itself rather than advertised beforehand.

Timing traps worth avoiding

Timing is the detail that catches people out. The 2025 voting stretch occupied mid-September only, and results did not surface until December 4, well after the ballots closed, so nobody should expect a same-week verdict. Anyone who misses the window simply waits for the next edition, because the event closes fully once winners are announced.

How does this ballot compare with other Minnesota readers polls?

Minnesota sustains a crowded field of community ballots, and the neighbors to this page show how varied the models are. CommunityVotes Rochester and CommunityVotes Duluth run city-centered community votes. The Duluth News Tribune and the Brainerd Dispatch each stage a Best of the Best contest rooted in their own coverage areas. Minnesota's Best and Best of the Midwest reach across wider territory still. Against that backdrop, River Valley Reader's Choice is the locally focused option: one town's paper, one community's nominees, and results that speak only for Granite Falls.

That narrow scope shapes strategy on both sides. Nominees face a smaller field, so a determined push by a business's regulars can move the outcome in a way it might not on a statewide ballot. Supporters, meanwhile, get a shorter, sharper decision: fewer slots, closer ties to places they actually visit. Anyone weighing whether paid help makes sense across several of these programs at once can start with an award-votes primer before deciding where to invest effort.

The neighboring ballots

How can a Granite Falls business build support during the voting round?

The decisive factor in this poll is the calendar, because the voting round occupies a compact September stretch and selections made outside it do not register. A business with loyal regulars should treat the published timeline as its campaign plan: verify the round is live, then ask customers face to face, by email and through social channels while balloting stays open.

Granite Falls News posts no outside-help policy on the event page, so straightforward customer outreach sits in safe territory, while automated voting tools raise a separate question best checked against the ballot's own terms. Momentum built during nominations only carries into the results if reminders continue once voting opens, which is where most campaigns in a short round succeed or stall. Wider tactics, from reminder cadence to getting the whole staff involved, are collected in the support guide.