Best of the Bay — Green Bay: How Voting Works & How to Win

One platform, two Wisconsin markets, and Green Bay ranks second

Milwaukee gets the bigger headline. Green Bay gets the bigger claim that actually matters to a local business: Best of the Bay is the second-largest YourChoiceAwards market in Wisconsin, trailing only Milwaukee Top Choice in scale. Same software, same nominate-then-vote skeleton, entirely separate calendar.

The Green Bay Press-Gazette, part of Gannett's USA TODAY Network, brands the program locally as Best of the Bay and runs it through YourChoiceAwards at yourchoiceawards.com/greenbay/, mirrored at greenbaypressgazette.gannettcontests.com. A business gets nominated first. Only the leading names per category advance to a finalist ballot. The public then votes, and results land in a Press-Gazette print insert plus an annual gala.

Rank matters here for a plain reason. A statewide vendor weighing which Wisconsin markets to enter gets a fair signal that Green Bay draws real volume, not a token regional afterthought. See the Wisconsin contest hub for how this measures against Milwaukee Top Choice and the state's other readers' polls.

Why the Milwaukee comparison is the fastest way to avoid a wasted campaign

Confusing the two costs a business its whole cycle. Milwaukee Top Choice runs nominations in spring and a public vote a few weeks later, with July print results. Best of the Bay follows the same two-stage shape, nomination window, tally gap, finalist vote, but on its own separate schedule set independently by the Press-Gazette. A reminder timed to Milwaukee's dates does nothing for a Green Bay entrant, and vice versa.

Same skeleton, different bones

Both markets share the identical mechanic: nominate, wait through a blind tally period, vote the finalist ballot, then wait again for print. What differs is everything else, the exact dates, the category labels, and how each paper packages its results. A business with locations in both metros needs two separate campaign calendars, not one shared assumption.

For the mechanics behind running any award-style push, award-style vote campaigns applies to either format, and best business of the year voting covers the broader nominate-then-vote pattern both programs use.

150+ categories, and why the exact subcategory beats a broad guess

Restaurants. Retail. Health and wellness. Home services. Professional services. Those broad groups hold dozens of subcategories apiece, and picking the closest-sounding label instead of the exact one splits recognition against a business's own interest.

A De Pere landscaper that nominates under a vague "home services" label instead of the exact subcategory gives up findability to whoever picked the narrower slot. Regulars searching the ballot expect the business exactly where they already think of it.

De Pere, Ashwaubenon, and the Fox Valley towns that share Green Bay's ballot

Best of the Bay groups by category, not by suburb. A De Pere coffee shop and a downtown Green Bay coffee shop can land in the same category together; a Howard clinic and a Suamico boutique never will, because health services and retail run as separate races entirely.

A business with locations across several of these towns shouldn't assume its vote count concentrates in any single one. The Press-Gazette's readership spans the Fox Valley and greater Green Bay as one audience, which is part of why the ballot needs 150-plus categories rather than a dozen broad ones.

What the gala and print insert mean before results are official

No public, year-by-year winners archive sits on this page, because the Press-Gazette's own print insert and gala are the confirmed source for a given year's results. Screenshots, old PDFs, or reseller claims about past Best of the Bay winners shouldn't be treated as current until checked against that specific year's published insert.

"Nominated" and "finalist" hold up the moment those stages happen. "Winner" only holds up once the Press-Gazette prints the exact year and category. "Best of the Bay 2026 winner, Retail - Boutique" survives scrutiny; a flat "Green Bay's best" does not, since it skips the two details the organizer actually decides on. A vendor helping a Fox Valley business turn real customer attention into ballot activity should hold that same line rather than let a client's marketing outrun what the Press-Gazette has confirmed. See how a real vote push should look and the IP-votes pillar for the mechanics behind pacing outreach across a finalist window like this one.