Get ‘Em Here : You’d Be Surprised at Who’s Selling Lottery Tickets

In the last three years, Bud’s Meat Hut in Santa Ana has sold Mace, ashtrays and cockatiels along with prime rib and hamburger meat.

So when the California Lottery Commission sought applications for selling lottery tickets, owner Bud Rowe applied.

“Anything new that comes along, I want to try it,” the meat market owner said. “The tickets should bring people in here. And I’m all for the lottery. Everybody should gamble a little bit . . . and it’s better to keep the money at home than in Las Vegas.”

One of 1,572 in County

Rowe’s firm was one of 1,572 in Orange County, 20,000 in California, that received contracts last week to sell the tickets. (About 28,000 firms and individuals had applied, 2,089 in Orange County.)

Orange County firms selected included not only bars, restaurants, gas stations and supermarkets, but a Fullerton dentist, a dog-grooming shop, bait shops and the Orange Drive-in Swapmeet.

These first contracts are provisional, lottery officials stressed. After the first game in late September or early October, Lottery Commission investigators will conduct background checks on store owners and will visit each outlet to “look at the three Ts--time (the hours they’re open), traffic (the foot traffic in a store) and transactions (the number sold per day),” according to Roger Kluth, who is in charge of the commission’s retailer network.

Ticket sellers are to receive 5 cents on each $1 ticket sold.

At that rate, Kluth, for one, doesn’t understand why anyone would want to sell tickets.

“It surprises me that a lot of people would want to do it,” he said. “They buy the tickets in a $500 book and if they sell all the tickets, they’ve made 25 bucks . . . . I’m surprised when I see all the bars that have applied. If I’m a bar owner and I sell a beer, I can make 50 cents. But if I sell a lottery ticket, I make five cents.”

‘Bring a Lot More Business’

Orange County’s ticket-sellers admit the commission is lousy, but most are betting on something else--traffic.

“I understood it would be a good deal--bring a lot more business in my shop,” said Richard Hackett, owner of Classy Touch Dog Grooming of Cypress.

“I don’t know many people that take their dogs with them to buy lottery tickets,” Hackett added. “But who knows? I’m going to go for it.”

Donna Hausner, owner of A-1 Video in Anaheim, said she was hoping the lottery tickets would bring some new foot traffic into her store. Since last January, business had slowed after a major market in her small shopping center went out of business.

“I’m hoping it (selling lottery tickets) will bring traffic into my store that wouldn’t normally come up here,” Hausner said.

Still, Hausner said, she had questions about how lottery sales would work, including how lottery commissions would affect her taxes. “I’m not entirely committed,” she said. “I don’t know if it will help me or hurt me.”

He’s Optimistic

More optimistic was Steve Riboli, whose family business, the San Antonio Winery, planned to sell lottery tickets at all 10 locations, including outlets in Orange, Stanton, Anaheim and Newport Beach.

“I hope one of my customers wins $2 million,” Riboli said. “If a store has winners at one location, people may keep going back--like it’s a jackpot area--we hope.”

One business, National Beautified Closets of Costa Mesa, had an unusual twist to ticket distribution.

Administrative director Julia Hankins said her firm, which designs and installs shelving and hanging sections for closets, was planning to give lottery tickets to its customers, rather than sell them. (Such a plan is legal, according to lottery spokesman William Seaton. “As long as they’re legally purchased, you can do what you want with them,” Seaton said.)

Although most ticket vendors were enthusiastic about being selected, most also said they would wait to advertise their newest product until they received more information from the Lottery Commission. The commission’s local staff is holding a series of classes for Orange County vendors beginning Tuesday at the Brookhurst Community Center in Anaheim.

Still, some firms were wasting no time to announce their coup. Bud’s Meat Hut, for instance, had posted two large signs on its windows. At O’Neill Moving Systems in Santa Ana, owner William O’Neill has put a sign near his public scales.

Though a moving firm might seem an odd place for selling lottery tickets, O’Neill said that about 300 people used his scales each day and they were “the truck driver type--people who are always interested in gambling.”

At Val’s Paint & Decorating in Fountain Valley, owner Vince Sosa put up a lottery ticket sale sign as soon as he got the Lottery Commission’s notification letter last week.

In addition, Sosa has been collecting names--16 so far--of people who want to be notified as soon as tickets go on sale.

“I’m kind of excited about it,” Sosa said. “I hope it’s going to increase business . . . and I’m going to have a winning ticket. I know I am.”