Wyoming Tribune Eagle Best of the Best: How Voting Works & How to Win

Four ballots, one city, and this is only one of them

Cheyenne runs more best-of contests than any other city in Wyoming. Four, to be specific: this one, the statewide Best of Wyoming out of Casper, Cap City's Best, and CommunityVotes Cheyenne. Get nominated on the wrong one, and the customer base votes into a ballot that never counted.

This page covers the Wyoming Tribune Eagle's version specifically, at wyomingnews.com/community/readers_choice/. It's the paper-of-record ballot for Wyoming's capital city, run on the same infrastructure as the Laramie Boomerang's own contest one county over. None of the four Cheyenne-area programs share a nomination pool. A bakery entered on Cap City's Best could win there and still never appear on this ballot unless someone separately nominated it here. See the Wyoming contest hub for how this compares to the state's other fan-vote programs.

What isn't published matters as much as what is

No public archive of past Wyoming Tribune Eagle Best of the Best winners turned up in researching this page. That gap is worth stating plainly rather than papering over with a guess. Old newspaper inserts and reseller pages sometimes circulate category claims that were never confirmed, or that expired years back.

The paper does not release a running vote count during the open voting window either, which is standard for this format across Lee Enterprises' Wyoming properties. If a competitor claims a specific mid-contest tally, that number did not come from wyomingnews.com.

What to write once results actually post

Precise language survives scrutiny; broad language doesn't. "Wyoming Tribune Eagle Best of the Best 2025 winner, Best Coffee Shop" holds up once the paper confirms it. Just "Cheyenne's favorite coffee" doesn't, and in a market running four separate best-of ballots at once, a vague claim like that could plausibly belong to any of the other three. Naming the Wyoming Tribune Eagle specifically is part of making the claim checkable. Before results post, "nominated" and "vote for us" are the honest verbs. For the mechanics behind award-style ballots generally, see this award voting overview.

The nomination window is the only gate that matters

Two stages, not one. Nominations open first; only the resulting shortlist reaches the public voting round. Skip the nomination window, and a business with a loyal Cheyenne following simply has no category slot later, no matter how many repeat customers it has.

Category labels aren't fixed year to year on this format across Lee Enterprises' Wyoming papers, so a business listed under one label last cycle should verify the current name rather than assume it carried over. Restaurants specifically can use the restaurant vote campaign guide for timing customer reminders across a two-stage ballot like this one.

A capital city, a county line, and a rural fringe that isn't Cheyenne proper

Laramie County stretches past Cheyenne's city limits to Burns, Pine Bluffs, Albin, and Carpenter. That matters for categories where the paper's coverage area is countywide rather than city-only. A Pine Bluffs feed store and a downtown Cheyenne boutique aren't automatically in different pools; the category's stated scope decides that, and it can vary by category within the same ballot.

Cheyenne's identity as the state capital shapes who reads the Wyoming Tribune Eagle in the first place. State government workers, legislative-session visitors, and a denser downtown business core give this market a different rhythm than Laramie's university-driven calendar or Casper's oil-and-gas base. A campaign built around back-to-school timing, which works well in a college town, has less pull here than one built around the legislature's session or the county fair calendar.

A founder-led Cheyenne business, where the owner's own visibility drives client trust, may want the personal-brand vote outreach guide for framing reminders that pair a named principal with the official ballot link.

Same platform as Laramie, different county, different result

The Wyoming Tribune Eagle and the Laramie Boomerang both run on wyomingnews.com under Lee Enterprises, and it would be easy to assume they're the same contest with two names. They aren't. Laramie's Best of the Best covers Albany County and closes with an in-person awards banquet at a Laramie hotel. This Cheyenne ballot covers Laramie County, a different county despite the near-identical name, and no banquet component has been confirmed for it.

A business with locations in both Cheyenne and Laramie needs two separate nominations; shared infrastructure doesn't mean a shared ballot. The statewide Best of Wyoming program adds a third layer entirely, reaching both cities plus eight more under one Casper-based ballot. Businesses weighing which programs to enter can review the general real votes guidance or the general contest-vote playbook, and Wyoming supporters who also follow prep sports can compare mechanics against the Wyoming High School Athlete of the Week. No promotion vendor, including us, can guarantee a win on any of these; the organizer's own tally and category competition decide that. General contest legality questions are covered at is buying votes legal.