Best Worst Dining Nightlife: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Best Worst Dining Nightlife ballot is and who runs it

Best Worst Dining Nightlife is the dining and nightlife slice of the Best and Worst readers' ballot published by richmondmagazine.com, the Richmond magazine brand whose masthead carries the copyright line of Target Communications Inc. The organizer is registered as a Virginia newspaper in the press association directory, and the market it serves is the Richmond metro area of Virginia. Its vertical is best-of, the vote is open to the public, and picks are cast on the magazine's own website with no third-party polling service in between.

The voting address for the program is the dining and nightlife page on richmondmagazine.com, and that page is where a supporter's picks are cast. Readers of the magazine's food and drink coverage are the audience the ballot speaks to. The 2015 page carried dining category names such as restaurant, takeout, happy hour and neighborhood dining picks, presented as candidate phrases from the page rather than as a claimed complete list.

The dated record: which editions are confirmed and when the window falls

The clearest dated anchor is the 2015 edition. The page titled Best and Worst 2015: Dining and Nightlife carried a results article, And the winners are..., credited to Richmond magazine staff and published on July 31, 2015, which places that cycle's voting and results window in July 2015.

Confirmed editions after that fall in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, plus 2026, so the program's run spans 2015 and then every year from 2019 onward without a gap. The publisher's 2023 introduction to the umbrella franchise calls it the 36th annual Best and Worst issue and describes readers' picks spanning services, stores, restaurants, entertainment and more. That franchise-wide description covers the whole Best and Worst effort, of which this dining and nightlife ballot is one part.

Two things stay off the ballot page: the exact dates when voting starts and ends in the current cycle, and any text on how many times a single person may vote or who qualifies; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Everything else here comes from the publisher's own pages.

How a supporter votes in the dining and nightlife ballot today

Voting happens on richmondmagazine.com itself, which shapes the whole experience. A supporter visits the dining and nightlife ballot page, reads the dining categories presented there, and casts picks in the ones they can answer honestly. Because the ballot is published at the magazine's own domain, no separate polling account and no third-party platform sit between the reader and the form.

The 2015 page shows how a cycle closes: the ballot runs as part of the magazine's wider Best and Worst effort, and results are announced on the site once the window ends, as they were on July 31, 2015 in that cycle. A supporter who wants a particular restaurant or bar to win therefore has a simple sequence: pick the right categories, share the ballot address with people who actually know the business, and ask every one of them to vote. For a fuller treatment of outreach that fits reader ballots, see how to get more votes online. The form's exact layout for the current cycle is whatever the publisher prints on the live page.

How this ballot sits beside its Virginia neighbours

The dining and nightlife ballot is one of several Virginia reader ballots covered in this reference. Richmond magazine also publishes Best of Richmond, a broader program from the same publisher; that is a publisher link, not proof that the two programs are the same contest, and each keeps its own page and its own rules.

Elsewhere in the state, readers can vote in Best of Arlington, the BroadwayWorld Central Virginia Awards, the BroadwayWorld NOVA Awards, Best of Coastal Virginia Magazine, Best of Charlottesville and the Daily Progress Charlottesville Readers' Choice. Each of those ballots belongs to a separate publisher and carries its own categories, window and rules, so a pick cast in one does not count in another.

What makes this ballot distinct within that set is its shape: it is a single vertical slice, dining and nightlife, cut from a large annual franchise, published at the magazine's own domain and anchored to the Richmond metro market rather than to a statewide or multi-city audience.

Strengthening support in this ballot without guessing at rules

Winning support in this ballot reduces to turning genuine customers into voters. The mechanic is a public pick on the magazine's own page, so the outreach that fits it is direct: name the categories where the business belongs, hand supporters the ballot address, and ask every person to cast a pick while the window is open. A restaurant's regulars, a bar's weeknight crowd and a takeout spot's delivery customers are the audiences most likely to follow through.

Because the publisher prints no stated policy on organized voting pushes for this ballot, the safe approach is the one that works under any rules: keep every ask personal and real. A push built on people who actually know the business never has to be defended to anyone. Where paid support fits into that picture, and what it costs, is laid out on buy award votes.