Best of Philly (Philadelphia Magazine): How Voting Works & How to Win

Most of Best of Philly was never a vote to begin with

phillymag.com/best-of-philly-faq/ says it plainly: most Best of Philly winners are editorial picks, chosen by Philadelphia Magazine's own writers and editors. A public reader vote covers only a handful of categories each cycle, and which categories carry one shifts from year to year.

That single fact changes what a business should expect more than any deadline or category count could. A campaign built to "get out the vote" for an editorial category isn't just wasted effort, it's aimed at a decision no outreach can touch.

No public vote totals, no fixed reader-voted category list, and no confirmed close date appear anywhere in the record checked here. Rather than paper over that, the place to start is the FAQ page itself; see how online contest votes work for how a reader-voted slice like this one typically behaves once identified.

Two Pennsylvania city magazines, two opposite mechanics

"Best of Philly" and "Best of the 'Burgh" sound like the same format run by two sister publications in the same state. They aren't. Pittsburgh Magazine's Best of the 'Burgh is a pure online reader ballot, capped at an hourly vote limit per category, with no editorial layer sitting on top. Philadelphia Magazine's Best of Philly inverts that: editorial selection first, reader voting as the smaller exception.

A business owner who ran a Best of the 'Burgh campaign and expects the same rules in Philadelphia will misjudge the entire approach. There's no hourly cap to plan around here, because most Best of Philly categories were never open to a cap-limited vote in the first place. Confirming which track a category sits in comes before any strategy conversation, not after.

Pennsylvania also runs statewide sport fan votes that share nothing with either magazine program. The Pennsylvania High School Athlete of the Week poll, Mr. PA Football, and the PennLive Mid-Penn Boys Basketball Player of the Week ballot are all sports-specific fan votes, not consumer or business awards, and none of them share a publisher or mechanic with Best of Philly or Best of the 'Burgh.

What the FAQ confirms, and what it deliberately leaves open

Editorial. Reader-voted. Those are the only two tracks phillymag.com/best-of-philly-faq/ describes, and the page does not commit to a fixed count of how many categories fall into each bucket. That's a real gap, not an oversight on this page: the split itself is confirmed, the current year's exact category list is not.

Why that ambiguity is the point, not a flaw

Philadelphia Magazine keeps editorial discretion over most of the program precisely so a well-funded vote push can't buy its way into a title the magazine's own writers didn't choose. A reader-voted slice exists alongside that, but it's the exception layered on top of an editorial award, not the award itself.

For the categories that do take votes, the general mechanics of running a legitimate readers'-poll campaign are covered in award-style vote campaigns, and food and beverage businesses specifically should read restaurant vote campaign guidance before assuming their category is one of the voted ones.

Fishtown to Rittenhouse: Philadelphia's business map doesn't sort by ballot track

Best of Philly groups by category, editorial or reader-voted, not by neighborhood. A Fishtown bar and a Rittenhouse Square bar land in the same category field regardless of which side of the city either one operates from.

Fishtown and Northern Liberties carry Philadelphia's newer restaurant and bar density; Rittenhouse Square anchors the city's upscale retail and dining scene; South Philly holds the deepest concentration of long-running family businesses; Manayunk draws a river-corridor mix of boutiques and restaurants; Old City leans historic-retail and galleries; West Philly and Fairmount round out the map with university-adjacent and rowhouse-neighborhood commercial strips. None of that geography appears on the ballot itself. It shapes who actually notices a business enough to care whether its category is even one of the voted ones.

A business that's never checked which track its own category falls under is planning blind. That single lookup, editorial or reader-voted, matters more here than in almost any other program on this site.

Making an honest Best of Philly claim, either track

Two tracks, two different standards for what a business can claim. A reader-voted win can point to the campaign, the customers who showed up, and the specific category and year. An editorial win can't claim any of that; it can only cite the magazine's own selection, because that's what actually happened.

"Best of Philly 2026, Editors' Pick, Best Cheesesteak" and "Best of Philly 2026, Readers' Choice, Best Cheesesteak" are both legitimate, specific, checkable claims. A generic "Philly's best cheesesteak" with neither track named is not, and it risks implying a public vote decided something Philadelphia Magazine's editors actually chose on their own.

A vote-promotion push only ever applies to the reader-voted slice, and only once that slice is confirmed on phillymag.com/best-of-philly-faq/ for the current cycle. It cannot influence an editorial pick, and it should never be marketed as though it could. Read is buying votes legal before spending anything on a campaign tied to this or any other awards program.