A grocery store in Cedar Rapids is at the top of the Iowa Lottery’s county-by-county list of the retailers that sold the most tickets in the fiscal year that just ended. Iowa Lottery CEO, Terry Rich, says location is one of the keys for retailers to do well.

“Usually there are a couple of factors. First off is traffic, its a very high traffic area with a lot of people corning and going to and from work. You’ll always notice that the higher the traffic in the morning and evening the bigger the sales when we have the big jackpot sales,” Rich says. Another factor is the amount of effort the retailer puts into selling the tickets.

“Usually you have a manager or someone who works there who likes the lottery, believes in seeing the partnership that’s there. Other stores you may not have that same hey, how can we work this. They may say, lets sell more coca-cola or whatever,” according to Rich.

The top outlet in the 99 counties, a Hy-Vee store, sold over one-million dollars worth of lottery products. “I think that that store has always been very supportive of the lottery, seeing the results and has had a lot of winners there. Of course the more volume you have, the more chance you have for winners,” Rich says.

The next highest volume of sales came at a convenience store on the other side of the state. A Kum & Go store in Fort Dodge in Webster County sold just over $670,000 in lottery products.

Three other counties had retailers top the 600-thousand dollar mark in sales. All three were Hy-Vee stores, with the top seller in Polk County hitting $650,109; in Black Hawk County $624,594 dollars and in Pottawattamie County, $605,509 dollars.

Ringgold at the southern edge of the state had the lowest total for a top retailer at $68,871, with the second lowest in Lyon County at the northwest corner of the state at $98,171 in sales.

Those were the only two counties where the top retailer was below $100,000 mark in sales.

See the full list of retailers here: FY13-Lottery top sellers