Data Notes
This archive combines award records and restaurant participation records from public National Buffalo Wing Festival pages and archived snapshots. It is unofficial, static, and intended as a browsable historical reference.
Sources
Award results and restaurant participation history were collected from buffalowing.com and archived buffalowing.com pages captured by the Wayback Machine.
The source pages were consolidated into structured records so the archive can be searched by year, restaurant, and category. Restaurant names are lightly normalized for browsing when the same business appears under small spelling or branding variations.
Public Data Files
Coverage
- Festival years: 2002 through 2026, excluding the cancelled 2020 festival.
- Award records: Award rows begin in 2003. Award records from the 2002 festival could not be located.
- Participants: 603 participant-year records are currently represented.
- Restaurants: 109 restaurants have awards on record and 85 appear only as participants.
How Counts Work
Total Awards counts placements in categories judged on sauce and flavor. Most of those categories are tasted blind. Best In Show and Craft Wings are judged instead by judges visiting each restaurant's booth, and category pages label them booth-judged. Both formats count the same way here.
Special awards such as Festival Favorite, Wing King Award, Rookie of the Year, and Spirit are not scored on sauce or flavor. They are tracked separately and are not included in judged totals or awards-per-festival rate.
Festival appearances are calculated from the union of participant-year records and award-year records, so an award winner can still show attended years with no awards on record.
Known Limitations
- This is an unofficial archive and may contain omissions from archived source pages.
- Restaurant names are normalized for browsing, but historical spelling and branding can vary by year.
- Participant locations are retained in source data but are not yet exposed throughout the public UI.