Lottery-signFive of the top ten retailers who sell Iowa Lottery products are once again in Cedar Rapids in eastern Iowa. Iowa Lottery spokesperson, Mary Neubauer, says three of the locations in Cedar Rapids are Hy-Vee grocery stores, another is a Hy-Vee pharmacy and the other is a convenience store.

“They are busy stores anyway, people are buying their gas there, they’re buying their groceries there, they’re taking their dry cleaning back, all of those things. They’re buying their lottery tickets while they’re running their other errands as well. In particular for the stores that are in the Cedar Rapids area, they are very large super markets in that particular city that again are just getting really high foot traffic. As people are running their other errands and buying their groceries, they are also buying their lottery tickets,” Neubauer says.

Only one retailer in Des Moines, the largest city in the state cracked the top ten. Neubauer says that because there are more lottery outlets in Des Moines, which spreads sales out more. And she says many people work in Des Moines but commute in from surrounding counties. “A lot of the sales from the Des Moines area are in the outlying areas of that metro circle at this point,” Neubauer says.

While the top selling locations in the more heavily populated counties are grocery stores, the top selling outlets in more rural counties are convenience stores. “Pretty much where people are going to run their errands, to buy their gas, to maybe pop in and buy a snack, they’re buying their lottery tickets in those locations too,” Neubauer says. A Council Bluffs grocery store was seventh on the sales list. Neubauer says the border counties do get business from out-of-state.

“When you get to the border counties — maybe when you’re in the Quad Cities, when you’re in the Dubuque area, Sioux City, Council Bluffs — you are seeing folks there go back-and-forth across the state borders, so folks who are from Iowa are buying tickets there — and vice-versa. And that’s just part of our mobile society,” Neubauer says.

The final numbers from the Iowa Lottery confirmed earlier projections that overall sales would be in the top four in its 30-year history. Total lottery sales topped 300 million dollars for the fourth straight year.

Here are the top ten retailers in Iowa for lottery sales in the fiscal year:
Retailer Address City FY 15 Sales

Hy-Vee 20 Wilson Ave. SW Cedar Rapids $866,206
Kum & Go 115 N. 22nd St. Fort Dodge $846,363
Hy-Vee 1843 Johnson Ave. NW Cedar Rapids $765,377
Hy-Vee 3235 Oakland Road NE Cedar Rapids $716,337
Hy-Vee 2540 Euclid Ave. Des Moines $624,224
Hy-Vee 4000 University Ave. Waterloo $614,288
Hy-Vee 2323 W. Broadway Council Bluffs$603,202
Hy-Vee 2400 Fourth St. SW Mason City $581,452
Guppy’s On The Go 235 Edgewood Road NW Cedar Rapids $560,360
Hy-Vee Drugstore 1520 Sixth St. SW Cedar Rapids $556,925

FY2015-Top Winners By County.xls