For years, The Local Best of Sioux Falls has been collecting and tabulating data from consumers about who their favorite businesses are. They are not alone in this business model of advertising and marketing, but Nate Henry and his crew have been doing it the longest in this market. Other entities that do this exist, they just haven’t had the impact of TLB Sioux Falls.

The Local Best and JJ’s go way back. We have a large number of The Local Best plackards hanging on our wall going back two decades.

I will be honest, I have questioned the methods with how they tabulate their data. I have also questioned the impact of their advertising. But, like most advertising and marketing tools, you really never know what the impact is unless consumers tell you speficially why they chose you instead of someone else.

I also questioned some of their category representations. Up until about ten years ago, there was no specific category for adult beverage retail. Bars and package adult beverage stores were lumped into the same category, which was always kind of strange to me as it is two different demographics. I discussed this with Nate back then and they made some changes, creating a Beer, Wine & Spirits category that is, for the most part, package adult beverage retail.  (Side Note: I have yet to receive a thank you from my fellow adult beverage retailers for this effort.)

Once this was rectified, I came to the conclusion that their results were a good sampling of the community and what their interests are. I also came to the conclusion that their marketing tools were impactful and worthy of the annual spend.

The polling cycle for TLB lasts a year. It starts when the previous poll ends. Toward the end of the polling cycle a lot of businesses will campaign to either gain some love from the respondents, or retain their position. We did this for a couple of years, but decided that if people like us and are willing to take the time to vote, that would give a clearer indication of the impact of TLB and along with that our impact and visibility in the market. So we haven’t campaigned for quite some time.

JJ’s has been in the top five for about 20 years. We have been awarded the top spot at #1 for the last six years. This year we came in at #2 behind what would be classified, in my opinion, as a big box adult beverage retailer.

Nate learned from me that I like data. So when he presents the results, he also provides the demographic breakdown of respondents and where we landed with certain groups. Gender, age, income and zip code.

With just under 9,000 respondents averaging 24 categories of voting, we are consistently #1 with men. We go back and forth with women between #1 and #2. We are consistently #1 in our area (57108 & 57104) #1 with higher income earners and #2 with median income $40k-99k. We are also #1 with 40-49 year olds and #1 with 80 plus (not a surprise as we have been around nearly 30 years). All other age demographics we are #2.

If I were to make a guess (as this is not one of the data points that we are provided) the largest number of voters in TLB are likely women. So, if we are #2 with women, we will be #2 overall. That’s just math. This result surprises me a little as a majority of our regular clientele are women. Both in retails sales and JJ’s Bar.

With all of that, even though we are not #1 overall this time, we are still top three across all other demographics. That’s pretty solid for our locally owned and operated Mom & Pop shop.

As demographics of respondents to this poll shift, so do the votes. I find it fascinating to watch and wish I would have been tracking the shifts over the years to see how it relates to the data that is provided.

Am I disappointed that we slipped a spot in the totality of the polling? Maybe a little, but that’s mostly ego. You never want to lose ground, especially to a business that has made it their sole purpose to dominate the market. But we can certainly tie the slippage to the changing demographics and economics of our community. And also adult beverage retail in general as we continue to maintain our standards with product selection, pricing and service in an adult beverage retail market that is, for lack of a better word, struggling. The bigger places that carry more products are usually going to win out with certain demographics. That’s just math. There is a mindset that bigger is better when it comes to value, and in some cases that is true. But here at JJ’s, we feel that we still offer the best value and do our best to provide a top notch experience for everyone who walks through the door. That’s just fact.

So, cheers to #2! I will take the win. Come and check us out if you haven’t lately. We are doing some fun things down here on our island on 57th Street, and we aren’t going anywhere anytime soon!