ORLANDO, Fla. – Tasha Thompson believes she has the most luck buying lottery tickets at Rightway Food Store on North Orange Blossom Trail.
“This is the best store to come to because I win all the time here,” Thomson said as she purchased several scratch-off tickets. “(About two years ago), I’m not going to say how much, I won a lot (of money) off two $5 tickets. It was a lot. So this is a good store.”
Data obtained from the Florida Lottery confirms Thompson’s theory, that the 6700 N. Orange Blossom Trail store is the most winning retailer in Central Florida when it comes to large payouts.
Over a two-year period from 2017 to 2018, the Orlando store sold 130 winning tickets with large prizes of $600 or more. That total includes both scratch-off tickets and “draw” games such as Powerball, Mega Millions and Fantasy 5.
Winners who collect prizes of $600 or more must fill out a claim form indicating where the ticket was purchased.
Those claim records show the 130 winning tickets sold at Rightway Food Store generated a total of nearly $366,000 in prize money, including $100,000 netted by a single Gold Rush Doubler scratch-off ticket in August 2018.
About 1.5 million lottery tickets were sold by the retailer between 2017 and 2018, records indicate, including tickets that paid out less than $600.
Below, see the list of the top 10 businesses with the most lottery winners. If you’re viewing this on the News 6 app, click here to see the graphic.
Retailers that sell a large number of lottery tickets typically produce a large number of big winners, but there is not an exact correlation between sales and winning tickets, Florida Lottery data shows.
Although Rightway Food Store sold the most winning tickets with large prizes in Central Florida over two years, another retailer actually sold nearly 713,000 more tickets overall during that time period, records show.
That retailer, Stop N Save Store at 1096 Mason Avenue in Daytona Beach, sold 112 winning tickets with prizes of $600 or more, records show.
"Around here we're known as the luckiest store," said employee Alvin Cherian. "We have a loyal base of customers, plus we also have customers who come all the way from Jacksonville and from Titusville."
More than $1 million in prize money was won by customers of Stop N Save Store over two years, records show, including one scratch-off ticket worth $500,000 and another that paid out $250,000.
See the total prizes by store and county below. If you’re viewing this on the News 6 app, click here to see the graphic.
Click on the dots in the map below to see how many winning lottery tickets were sold. Viewing this on the News 6 app? Click here to see the graphic.
