The Iowa Lottery had a record year in sales and the leading retailer is again in eastern Iowa.
“There is one particular Hy-Vee stored in Iowa that has been the lottery’s leading retailer in terms of sales for at least the last decade. And that store came out on top again this year,” according to Iowa Lottery spokesperson Mary Neubauer. The leading store is the Hy-Vee on Wilson Avenue in Cedar Rapids — which sold nearly 898-thousand dollars worth of lottery products.
“It’s in a really heavy residential area and it seems like everybody in that area shops at the store. And certainly while they are doing their other errands and buying groceries at the store, they also buy lottery tickets at that store. So, it was fun to see that store at the top of the list again,” Neubauer says.
Six other Cedar Rapids retailers were in the top ten for sales in the last fiscal year, with four of them connected to Hy-Vee, and the two others convenience stores. A Des Moines Hy-Vee store was number two on the list of sales — and was the only other retailer to crack $800,000 in sales ($815,175) A Hy-Vee in Council Bluffs was fifth on the list. The Pronto store in Denison was ninth on the list.
The Iowa Lottery introduced new touch-screen machines that sell scratch and lotto tickets to help deal with some of the lines in the busier store. Neubauer says they have proved to be popular.
“In the locations that they’re installed they are doing very, very well. They are adding to the sales in those places, and particularily, players seem to like to buy their Instaplay tickets through those machines,” according to Neubauer. “And so they are accomplishing what we wanted.” She says they only have 100 of the touch-screen machines across the state because of the cost.
“We hope that perhaps in the future just as technology becomes more affordable we can buy more of those machines. But for right now, they are in fairly limited locations,” Neubauer says. The Iowa Lottery had 371 million dollars in sales for the last fiscal year.
The Top 10 retailers in Iowa for lottery sales in FY 2018:
Retailer Address City FY 2018 Sales
Hy-Vee 20 Wilson Ave. Cedar Rapids $897,463
Hy-Vee 1843 Johnson Ave. NW Cedar Rapids $833,455
Hy-Vee 2540 E. Euclid Ave. Des Moines $815,175
Hy-Vee Gas 3935 Blairs Ferry Road NE Cedar Rapids $768,261
Hy-Vee 2323 W. Broadway Ave. Council Bluffs $732,535
JJs on Johnson Ave. 235 Edgewood Road NW Cedar Rapids $701,439
Hy-Vee Drugstore 1520 6th St. SW Cedar Rapids $675,484
Hy-Vee 3235 Oakland Road NE Cedar Rapids $662,862
Pronto 810 Fourth Ave. S. Denison $661,152
Hawkeye Conv. Store 2330 Wiley Blvd. SW Cedar Rapids $643,469