The best of the Best of the Best

For 25 years, your Boerne Star has been letting the community decide the Best of the Best.

Yes, today we’re celebrating our silver anniversary of informing people in these parts who and what the Best of the Best truly are.

Included in today’s paper is the 25th edition of Kendall County’s oldest, most preferred, most prestigious and … well … simply the best and most popular and trusted “Best of the Best” contest.

A whopping 111 winners and runners-up are listed in our special section. There are 12 main categories – food and beverage; business and financial services; apparel and jewelry; automotive; hospitality; residential services; home and family services; home furnishings; outdoor, farm and ranch; elder care; health and wellness; and community service.

In some categories, the stalwarts are back on top while in others some newcomers made a name for themselves. We hope you enjoy perusing through it and seeing if your personal favorites made the cut. I know many of mine did.

Just so you know, our Best of the Best is the original voting platform that has been a Boerne and Kendall County favorite now for that quarter-century. And we truly appreciate your support and your votes and ask that you please continue to shop local and support all of our businesses. We can’t stress enough that they’re all winners in their own regard!

We’re pretty sure that a record number of ballots were turned in this year – some voting in every or almost every category and some with just one line filled in. Our special keepsake section climaxes a five-month process that started with thousands of votes cast by thousands of subscribers, other readers and area residents. That led to a “Top 5” ballot and a second round of voting. All the votes carefully were tabulated, and the winners were determined. And today they’re announced.

People only could vote once, and the thousands and thousands of votes cast shows how deep and wide and dedicated our readership is here at The Star. We’re the leading source of news and information in Kendall County by a wide margin, and this is a great way to measure our popularity. We’re proud of our contest and proud it’s the most prestigious and most popular way to determine our community’s Best of the Best.

Our goal with this is simple. Producing the Best of the Best provides an enjoyable way for area businesses and their employees to get some much-deserved recognition for doing what they do. We applaud them all.

Of course, we also sincerely thank all of the Best of the Best nominees, as well as all the people who voted. The ballot and voting process included hundreds of worthy businesses. Again, we appreciate all of them.

What’s enjoyable for me is to look at the counts when the voting is over and we’ve tabulated the results. Of course, being a career newspaperman, elections and pouring over the numbers always is fun.

And just like any good politician will tell you, it pays to vote – no matter what the “election.”

Here’s proof. …

In several categories this year, the results were extremely close. In fact, in a handful of cases the winner or runner-up was determined by a single vote with hundreds of ballots cast.

In one category this year, the winner won by a single vote over the runner-up, and the runner-up finished one vote ahead of the third-place finisher.

Wow! It just doesn’t get any closer than that.

In a couple of other specific categories, it took about 2,500 votes to determine the winners. That’s just incredible!

Again, we thank everyone for voting, and we thank all of our businesses and owners for being an integral part of this community. We cherish partnering with each and every one of you. ...

You know, when it comes down to it, all of our local businesses and employees deserve recognition. Please do business with the advertisers and the businesses in this special section. They deserve our support.

And, again, congratulations to all our Bests of the Best. It’s certainly a title in which to brag about and be proud!

As always, thanks for reading – and please do read through this special silver anniversary Best of the Best section.