The Best of Minnesota is all right here!

Welcome! We are thrilled to bring you our inaugural edition of Minnesota’s Best. It represents the culmination of a year-long effort to discover and celebrate the businesses and places we love most — as voted by you, our readers, who know Minnesota best.

As Minnesota’s largest and most-trusted media company, we set out to deliver a “best of” program that would help support Minnesota businesses. These difficult times have taken a toll on local businesses and we wanted to do something that would give them more visibility. Our goal was to do this on a scale not previously seen in our state. Judging by the contents of this magazine, we think you will find Minnesota’s Best the new gold standard for discovering all the amazing businesses that make Minnesota such a great place to live, work and play.

Minnesota’s Best had over 5,700 businesses, organizations, and individuals competing to be named in the top three spots of 300+ categories.

During our voting, more than 525,000 votes were cast, an amazing reader response in our first year and a testament to how customers, fans, and friends feel about their favorite local businesses and the pride they have for Minnesota.

We encourage you to explore our winners and visit as many as possible as we continue to get back to life as normal. There were many worthy businesses that were nominated but did not place and we encourage you to support not just our winners but all local businesses. As we slowly emerge from these challenging times, let’s celebrate the perseverance of our local business owners and their employees.

Congratulations to all those who won. Thank you to all our advertisers for their support and to all those who cast a vote. We cannot wait to see you again in 2022 for another incredible year of Minnesota’s Best.

Paul Kasbohm
Star Tribune Chief Revenue Officer