The most admired

We hand out a lot of accolades at QSR. From the Best Franchise Deals to the 40/40 List, and from our monthly Ones to Watch series to our biennial Applied Tech Awards, we love giving people and companies the recognition they deserve, particularly when they’re making the industry or the world a better place.

But while we trust our collective gut when deeming who or what is deserving of praise, there’s one teeny-tiny detail that often sticks in our craw: How do you quantify this stuff? How can we say with absolute certainty who is the best at something or which company is a standard-bearer?

In answering that question, we’re launching our inaugural Reader’s Choice Awards. We have a hunch about which brands are most admired and which leaders are most respected, but what do you think? It’s time to turn the tables and open up the vote to the industry. Is the science here perfect? Probably not. (This was SurveyMonkey, after all, not some fancy-shmancy accounting firm.) But with several hundred votes cast and the voice of the people heard, these were the individuals and concepts we can verifiably say are deserving of praise.