For as long as most people in Opelika can remember, downtown had one business award. It went out once a year, folded into the city's State of the City address, and it went to one winner. This month, that changed. Opelika Main Street held its first-ever Downtown Awards Social on August 11, and instead of a single trophy, it handed out four: Business of the Year, Rising Star, Downtown Impact, and Spirit of Opelika.
That sounds like a small organizational tweak. It isn't. A single annual award only works when there's one kind of success to measure. Four categories mean Main Street looked at its own downtown and decided that businesses are winning in different ways now, on different timelines, for different reasons, and one prize can't capture all of it anymore.
What One Award Used to Flatten
A single annual award structurally rewards one kind of story: a business that has been around long enough to prove it can last. That's a real and useful thing to measure. It's also a story that treats every downtown business as if it's competing on the same clock.
This year's four winners make that clock look wrong. One business is barely two years old. Another has been building its name since 2015. A third just finished a build-out. A fourth is scaling production capacity by five times. None of those are the same kind of win, and lumping them into one award would have made at least three of them invisible.
The Bakery That Outgrew Its Own Growth Rate
Business of the Year went to Stinson Breads, the sourdough bakery Anna Claire and Matthew Stinson opened on North Railroad Avenue in April 2024. The number that explains the award isn't the age of the business. It's the growth curve. According to the Alabama Retail Association, which named the Stinsons its 2025 Emerging Retailer of the Year, the bakery's sales grew 434 percent from 2023 to 2024, then another 288 percent in 2025. That's not gradual traction. That's a business that outgrew its own building within a year and a half of opening.
Main Street's own award writeup points to what comes next: an expansion onto 1st Avenue, expected later this year, into a space several times the size of the current bakery. The Alabama Retail Association, in naming the Stinsons its 2025 Emerging Retailer of the Year, put the expected production increase at more than fivefold, with added indoor dining and expanded online ordering. Stinson Breads already wholesales to close to 20 restaurants and cafes across the Auburn-Opelika area, including Acre and Side Track Coffee. The award wasn't for surviving downtown. It was for a growth rate that made the current building the limiting factor.
The Wine Shop That Didn't Need Years to Matter
The Rising Star award went to Santé Wine Bar and Shoppe, which opened on South 9th Street in November 2024. Less than two years in, Main Street cited its immediate impact on the downtown business community as reason enough for recognition.
That's a meaningful category to invent, because the old single-award system had no real place for a business this young. Santé's owners, Chris Tomlinson and Matt Poirier, built the shop around a wine preservation system that keeps opened bottles fresh for 30 days, letting customers try wines by the one, three, or five-ounce pour instead of committing to a full glass. It's also become a private event space, booked for wine tastings and small gatherings in a downtown that didn't have many venues like it before. Rising Star exists to say a business can become part of downtown's identity fast, not just eventually.
The Bridal Shop That Invested in the Building, Not Just the Business
Downtown Impact went to Bella's Bridal, which expanded its dress shop into downtown Opelika at 100 South 8th Street. Main Street's award language is specific about why: the recognition was for the physical investment Bella's Bridal made in its space, not just for opening a storefront. As Main Street put it, the shop made an impact on 8th Street the moment its doors opened.
That distinction matters for anyone watching downtown's built environment change year over year. A business can rent a storefront and change nothing about the block. Bella's Bridal renovated one, which is a different kind of contribution to a historic district than foot traffic alone.
The Ice Cream Cart That Became a Decade of Showing Up
Spirit of Opelika, the fourth category, went to O Town Ice Cream, and it's the one award that isn't about growth or investment at all. Chris and Angela George started O Town as a single push cart in 2015. It grew into a brick-and-mortar shop, moved to its current spot on 2nd Avenue in 2018, and along the way became one of the businesses that consistently shows up for other people's events, not just its own.
Main Street's citation is about promotion and community-first behavior over more than a decade, not sales figures or square footage. That's a category the old single-award system genuinely could not have honored, because "biggest impact" and "longest-running goodwill" aren't the same measurement. Now they have separate categories, and separate winners.
"Downtown Opelika is successful because of the incredible people who invest their time, talent and resources," said Kelsey Sullivan, executive director of Opelika Main Street.
The Infrastructure Behind the Split
The four-category awards didn't appear in isolation. Opelika Main Street opened Phase 2 of its Downtown Resource Center this spring, adding a Downtown Opelika New Business Starter Kit and a Historic Downtown Opelika Development Guide designed to walk new entrepreneurs through opening a storefront in the district. Put next to the awards split, the pattern reads less like a one-off event and more like an organization building the scaffolding to support several different kinds of businesses succeeding at once, rather than funneling all of them toward one definition of success.
The pace on the ground backs that up. The day after the awards social, the Chamber held a ribbon cutting for Ryrowsie Boutique, a new women's clothing store downtown. A few blocks away, Boxcar, a nonprofit microcinema and arts space built out of a century-old former cotton warehouse on 1st Avenue, has been running film screenings and live performances since its soft opening in January. Other recent arrivals worth knowing about if you're walking the district:
- Ryrowsie Boutique — new women's clothing store, ribbon cutting held August 12
- Boxcar — nonprofit microcinema, art gallery, and cafe at 706 1st Avenue, built inside a converted early-1900s cotton warehouse
- KLM Tasty Donuts and Coffee — opened along Second Avenue earlier this year
None of these three needed an award to matter. But they're evidence of the same thing the four categories point to: downtown Opelika isn't adding businesses in one lane anymore. It's adding a bakery scaling toward wholesale production, a wine shop built for slow evenings, a boutique, a nonprofit cinema, and a donut shop, all within a few blocks of each other and all on different timelines.
What This Actually Changes If You Live Here
None of this requires you to do anything. That's the point of it. If you've lived in Opelika long enough to remember when downtown had one award and a handful of storefronts, this year's split is a useful marker for how much has diversified since then. The next time you're deciding where to grab a coffee or where to send visiting family for an afternoon, the answer isn't narrowing to one obvious pick. It's spreading across a bakery expanding into a warehouse-sized space, a wine bar built for lingering, an ice cream shop with a decade of receipts behind its reputation, and a cinema that didn't exist a year ago.
Main Street plans to keep the awards social going as an annual event. If this year's four winners are any indication, next year's list won't look like a rerun. It'll look like whatever downtown Opelika decides to become between now and then.
Carter Pair keeps a close eye on what's changing in downtown Opelika, not because every shift matters for real estate, but because knowing a place well means knowing what's opening, what's expanding, and what's earning its keep. If you ever want to talk about what's happening on the ground here, reach out.
