Public voting opens for Brighton’s best loved food and drink awards on 1st February 2024
The launch of the BRAVOs is now an established date in the Brighton foodie diary. Brought to you by Restaurants Brighton, there’s no doubt that Brighton’s best loved food and drink awards have truly hit their stride as they enter their seventh year this February.
One of the things that makes the BRAVOs special is they are the only awards in town where the public gets to vote – and decide the winner – in every category! Any local restaurant, cafe, bar or pub can enter and anyone can vote for them making the BRAVOs truly inclusive. Last year we had record numbers of venues and record number of voters, with 58,000 public votes for 600 venues! This year, the BRAVOs team expect 700 venues to enter.
The big emphasis for this year’s BRAVOs is celebrating the wonderful foodie community, adopting the anthem ‘Sussex by the Sea’ to lead the narrative of the social media campaign. They want to hear first hand from the people of Sussex about where they eat and drink, after all the winning votes will be cast by them. Expect to see some notable Brighton faces celebrating the rich and wonderful hospitality community.
This year the team will also be taking guidance from the University of Sussex to help them to establish what is sustainable, so criteria for entering the ‘most sustainable category’ is better quantified.
Nominations and New Categories
The BRAVOs are currently taking nominations from the public as well as from venues themselves. Nominations can be made here.
This process generates incredible diversity with nominations spanning the best known city-centre restaurants as well as ‘secret’ neighbourhood favourites – resulting in the top 20 destinations for each of the BRAVOS 18 categories. The BRAVOs team is expecting 700 + venues to be nominated in 2024 and there are an additional two categories this year to hopefully represent a better cross section of what the public would like to vote for, plus the categories showcase the many arms of the hospitality industry.
Every year, since their launch in 2017, the BRAVOs winners pages become a hugely useful resource for the local community and the millions of visitors that are drawn in by the city’s world-renowned hospitality. It’s easy to see why the top spots are hotly contested by competing businesses. Behind the scenes, the small but mighty BRAVOs team are gearing up while nominated venues are ‘game-planning’ for the launch.
International Sponsors
This year’s categories have had a mini 2024 makeover – with newbies like Best Lunch, Best Sussex Restaurant and Best Coffee being added to the mix. This is to include different kinds of businesses in this annual celebration of the hospitality scene. As always, they’ve got exciting sponsors on board championing the categories, including local and national businesses. UBER Eats – BRAVO’s headline sponsor – will also sponsor the Best Restaurant and Best Takeaway categories.
Vote online from 1st February
The BRAVOs launch on 1st February (this Thursday) and voting runs for six weeks. Winners will be announced on 28th March. During the voting window, the public are called upon to give their favourite venues a BRAVO. All voting is done through the BRAVOs website where you can vote for as many or as few categories as you want, with only one vote for each category.
The Winner of each category will receive an iconic Sussex made, sustainable BRAVO wooden trophy, while the top 20 will be placed and listed on the winners’ page.
Easy Voting
The BRAVOs website is super easy to use for voters to navigate. Choosing and voting for a favourite venue takes less than a minute, so there’s no excuse not to!
The BRAVOs – local awards supporting local businesses
BRAVO founder Nick Harvey, said: “Brighton hospitality is continuing to thrive against all the odds and we’d like to think that the BRAVOs has a part to play in its continued success. Every year we see new businesses nominated which shows us the food scene in Brighton and beyond is burgeoning and exciting. The thousands of votes from the public shows the local community is passionate about the amazingly good food and drink available in the city.”
The results always reveal a mix of exciting newcomers and predictably great establishments. Last year, saw the public vote Burnt Orange as BRAVOs’ Best Restaurant 2023 – holding on to the top spot for a second year – can they make it a triple? Who is going to be their biggest contender?
Best Restaurant is by far the most prestigious of categories – the winners draw in diners both nationally and internationally so it is all to play for. Former winners of the best restaurant BRAVO include Duncan Ray’s Little Fish Market (2019) and Steven Edwards’ etch. (2018). We’re excited to see who will be the champion of 2024!
Eat, vote, win
During the six week voting period, all the restaurants get busy on their social media trying to entice in votes, this is such a fun campaign to witness with lots of content opportunities. The BRAVOS team will be sharing the best of these on all of their platforms Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok to keep the energy up over the 6 weeks. Last year over 58,000 votes were counted and they’re aiming for more this year! The BRAVOs will also be running a prize giveaway as an extra incentive to get the votes cast – a chance for a voter to win £200 to spend at a venue of their choice. The winner will be picked randomly and announced alongside the winners.
Vote for your favourite Brighton food and drink hotspots from 1st February here.
