MANCHESTER, N.H. – Thousands descended upon Northeast Delta Dental Stadium on Thursday for the latest edition of New Hampshire’s biggest party.
New Hampshire Magazine once again gathered the best and favorite businesses of the Granite State for this year’s Best of NH event.
For years, New Hampshire Magazine took recommendations from readers as well as observations from its own staff to assemble a listing of New Hampshire’s best things in a wide variety of categories. However, the party accompanying the announcement of that listing is now just short of two decades old.
Until four years ago, the event was held at the venue now known as SNHU Arena. It was unclear at first what would come of the event, but according to New Hampshire Magazine editor Rick Broussard, those concerns were quickly allayed.
“By the time the doors were getting ready to open, we’d all been too busy and hadn’t gotten a chance to look at the ticket numbers yet, so we weren’t sure if anyone was out there,” said Broussard. “When the doors opened, we were really shocked at this line of people coming down that kept coming and kept coming. It’s been like that ever since.”
The move to Northeast Delta Dental Stadium and partnering with its owners, the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, gave the event a new flavor by incorporating the festival atmosphere of an outdoor environment with a concourse that allowed the event to go on even if the weather turned poor.
Regardless of the location, the event has come to serve as a way for New Hampshire restaurants to tout their bonafides and reach out to new customers.
One of those restaurants was Hermanos Cocina Mexicana in Concord, named Best of NH’s Best Mexican Restaurant for 2019.
Melissa Thompson has worked at the event for the past four years for Hermanos and she says the event has helped introduce her restaurant to new customers as well as reinforce satisfaction with current customers.
“We see a lot of our regular customers that tell us they love Hermanos, plus we get to meet a bunch of new people who have never been to our restaurant or heard of our restaurant,” she said. “We’ve been in business for 35 years and I’d say about 80 percent of our business is repeat customers, so it’s nice to get out there and introduce new people to our concept.”
While most of the vendors at the event were involved with food in some way, Best of NH also provides a way for non-profit groups such as Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children of NH (CASA) to reach out to those they may have never reached.
“This event is amazing. The exposure and all of the advertising they’ve done and all of the organizations that are tagging CASA in their social media posts, it’s just fantastic,” said Carolyn Cote, communications director for CASA. “It just gets the word out about what we’re doing and that is so valuable to us.”
More information and this year’s Best of NH winners can be found at the New Hampshire Magazine website.
