Every year, we ask our opinionated readers to tell us about their favorite people, places and things in the Springfield area. Over the decades we’ve been doing this, we’ve continued to tweak both the process and the results issue to try to keep things fresh and interesting.
This year, more people voted for their favorite nonprofit than anything else, but food still dominated the voting with eight out of the 10 top categories. But breakfast, bakery and donut shop took precedent, with burgers and horseshoes failing to make the top 10 for the first time in years.
New this year was a “text to vote” option that allowed businesses to campaign for votes by giving customers an easy way to vote in a specific category.
Wondering how all this works? Here are answers to the most common questions we hear:
Q. Are the results real? Don’t you just pick your advertisers to win?
A. The Best of Springfield results are based on what our readers chose as the best, which is not always the same as what our staff would prefer. Just ask the advertising department, there are many winners who have never spent a dime with us and others who frequently advertise but failed to win their category. While advertising helps remind people to vote for you, it certainly doesn’t guarantee the outcome.
Q. Why did national companies or chain stores win some of the categories? If you’re a locally owned business, shouldn’t you support other locally owned businesses?
A. See previous answer. We encourage our readers to vote (and shop) local, but ultimately, we don’t control the votes.
Q. Why wasn’t ______ category included
A. There are already more than 200 categories, so from a logistical perspective we have to consider the attention span of both the voters and readers. However, we do add and subtract categories based on reader feedback and current events. This year, we separated out wedding venue as a different category from event venue and added best gym under 100 members so that smaller gyms weren’t competing against those with thousands of members. We also added categories for hot dog, appliance sales and hospice, among others.
Keep in mind that there needs to be at least four or five contenders in a category to make it competitive, so if you’re asking for “Best battery store,” “Best place to buy a musical instrument,” or “Best clock shop” (all actual requests we’ve had), we’re taking that into consideration. If you think of a great category we’ve missed, email our associate publisher, James Bengfort, at jbengfort@illinoistimes.com.
Q. Why wasn’t _______ one of the options when I voted?
A. We hold an initial nomination round beginning in mid-August. The top five vote-getters in each category move on to the final voting. So if you want to lobby for a particular person or business to win, the time to start is in the nomination round.
Q. Why don’t all of the winners have a write up this year?
A. We used to publish a short blurb on each of the top picks. However, we do have many repeat winners, and it can be hard to find something different to say each year. Starting in 2019, we switched to a format with longer (but fewer) profiles. We now try to highlight new winners and categories to make it more interesting and informative for the reader.
We welcome comments on this, or anything else in our publication, which can be sent to letters@illinoistimes.com.
– Michelle Ownbey, executive editor
CATEGORIES WITH THE MOST VOTES:
1. Nonprofit
2. Breakfast
3. Bakery
4. Donut shop
5. Pizza
6. Restaurant for dessert
7. Asian
8. Nail salon
9. Drive-thru
10. Overall restaurant
This article appears in October 29-November 4, 2026.
