how we pick the winners...
Background to our pub awards
Whilst we recognise that most people in the pub business are putting a great deal of effort into making our pub visits an enjoyable experience, we also recognise that the management and staff of some pubs go that extra distance to create something rather special. Our five pint rating is something we only award to pubs we think are outstanding and is itself a rare accolade, but we also want to do something a little more special and recognise the crème de la crème. That’s why we’ve created these awards. We’re saying thanks for all the effort that has been put into the pubs over the year - we really appreciate it.
We're also saying thanks on behalf of our users. Millions of people a year use Fancyapint.com and it is clear they enjoy good pubs and use our site to find them. Through the usage data, we can track people's favourite pub destinations – and that’s how we formulate our visitors’ awards. They really are the most visited pubs.
See below for the background on each of the awards - what we look for and how we award them.
The awards
Reviewers’ award - best London pub
(four winners and one overall winner)
At Fancyapint? we have a team of more than 30 reviewers - aged 20-50+, female and male, straight and gay, smokers and non-smokers, from all walks of life - and what they have in common is a love of pubs. Every month we get together to discuss the pubs we’ve visited and to choose our top ten pubs we visited in the previous month. And every year we meet to select our top five pubs of the year. We’ve been to a lot of pubs (many more than the 2,800 pubs currently in the guide) so we feel we know what we’re talking about and it seems our visitors to the site agree with us.
After much debate we arrive at our top five and, we know it’s a cliché, but it really is a difficult decision to make. During the decision making process, all of us have to see a personal favourite or two discarded in favour of the majority vote. There is an overall winner in each of the two main categories, but no second, third, fourth or fifth – that’s far too close a call to make.
Special awards
The pub landscape is always changing, with new pubs opening, old ones closing, owners changing and dillapidated properties being brought back to life. Sometimes, amongst all this change, a bright new star emerges, challenging the established competition and proving, once again, that the demise of the great British pub has been vastly overrated.
Our special awards are our way of saying thanks for the care, dedication and enterprise of the people who worked hard to create a new pub experience us. We have three categories of special award: Best newcomer, best renovation and most improved. We don't always make an award in each of the categories - only if we come across a pub that shows just what can be done.
Reviewers’ award - best pub renovation
(one winner)
A self-explanatory accolade awarded to the pub, that, in the reviewers’ opinion, has been renovated in a sympathetic, considerate and imaginative way.
Reviewers’ award - most improved pub
(one winner)
This award recognises the management and staff who have worked hard to make an average pub much better or perhaps a good pub great. We know that most pubs try every single day to make their places special for their clientele – it’s a fact of life if you want to survive in a fickle and savvy marketplace – but, again, we recognise that some go that extra distance to create something outstanding. This award is for the management and staff of the pub that have done everything they possibly could to make a visit to their pub something to cherish.
Reviewers’ award - best rennovation
(One winner)
A self-explanatory accolade awarded to the pub, that, in the reviewers’ opinion, has been renovated in a sympathetic, considerate and imaginative way
Visitors’ award - best London pub
(four winners and one overall winner)
The visitors’ awards are based on an index derived from understanding how our people use our site to find pubs to got to and helped by feedback from site visitors. UNlike some other guides, we feel that letting our site vistors cast votes online can be open to abuse and the results are often skewed by a vocal minority. Instead, we analyse how people actually use Fancyapint.com and create an index that reflects the pubs' popularity with our readers.