Celebrating the Best of the Region 

Welcome to the QCBJ’s inaugural Best of the Region that showcases and honors a multitude of Quad Cities businesses that you, our readers, voted as the best of the best. 

In May, we conducted an online survey to give QCBJ readers an opportunity to tell us their favorite Quad Cities businesses from banks and builders to architects and IT support. 

This special edition reveals the winners and runners up in each of the 46 categories for which we sought your nominations. The survey encompassed a wide range of industries and gathered nominations from subscribers of our print publication and our daily newsletter readers.

“Most Best of Awards tend to be focused on business-to-consumer categories like best restaurant or best bar. We created these awards to primarily focus on the important but less celebrated business-to-business categories,” said John F. Lohman, group publisher of the QCBJ and the Corridor Business Journal (CBJ). 

The nominations we received – from those who are the major, established players in their industries to some of the newcomers and some of the unsung heroes – all “reinforce the importance of buying local,” he said. 

Mr. Lohman’s own Corridor Media Group, based in North Liberty, Iowa, planted roots in our community with the launch of the Quad Cities Regional Business Journal on Dec. 1, 2021. 

This week, you’ll find listings on our final winners of 2022, who will hold the distinction as the first-ever QCBJ Best of the Region honorees. 

We had several multi-award winners whose companies won in more than one category; for example, Genesis, which was named Best Hospital and Best Home Health Care; and IMEG, which won Best Engineering Firm and its President and CEO Paul VanDuyne won Business Leader. Other key winners were: Quad City Bank & Trust, which won the Best Wealth Management and Best Bank categories; the Ruhl companies including Ruhl&Ruhl Realtors, which won Best Realty Firm, and NAI Ruhl Commercial Co., which won Best Commercial Realty Company; Twin State Technical Services, which won both Best IT Firm and Best Website/App Developer; and Honkamp Krueger & Co., which won both Best Accounting Firm and Best Business Consulting. 

Other categories helped showcase the small, family-owned businesses that are just as critical to the Quad Cities economy as our largest employers. Some of those winners were: Best Jeweler – Necker’s; Best Office Equipment and Supplies – Bettendorf Office Products. Inc.; Best Residential Interior Designer – Within by Conceptual Designs Inc.; Best Restaurant – The Monarch; Best Restoration Company – Blaze Restoration Inc.; and Best Sign Company – Riverbend Signworks.

Thank you for casting your vote and, in essence, celebrating all the great companies that call the Quad Cities home. We hope you will continue to support your favorites with your business to help them all prosper and succeed. 

We congratulate all the businesses and the people behind them who won top honors or were among the Best of the Region nominees.

–Jennifer DeWitt, Editor

2022 Best of the Region