Store’s Getting Well but Offers No Cure for the Lotto Itch
The sign over the back counter at Ping Yuen Drug Store says “prescriptions,” but most of the people standing three deep in the back of this Chinatown store didn’t make their way past the roast duck and down the aisles of imported groceries to buy pills.
“I want to make a fortune,” said Tony Chen, 25, a warehouse worker from Taiwan who has helped turn the store into the leading Lotto ticket retailer in the state. At least once a week for the six weeks since the legalized version of the old numbers game began, Chen has joined the crowd at the back counter to try his luck at picking six winning numbers.
Customers like Chen have enabled Ping Yuen to maintain its status as the California Lottery’s No. 1 retailer, an accolade it has earned by selling 2.2 million “scratch-off” tickets since that game began in October. The drugstore capped that by selling 51,655 tickets for the new Lotto 6/49 game at $1 apiece during a two-week period ending Nov. 5.
State lottery officials say the extraordinary success of Ping Yuen’s lottery sales may lie in the aggressive sales techniques of owner Ray Chow.
Chow, 61, has held raffles for purchasers of more than 10 tickets and has given away television sets and other prizes. A drawing scheduled to coincide with the Chinese New Year in February features a trip to Hawaii as the grand prize, Chow said.
Chow said having three scratch-off ticket buyers win $100,000 each has also helped make his store the most popular in the state. Although he said pilfering of candy and soda has gone up as a consequence of the increased traffic, Chow is not complaining. Lottery retailers make five cents on every ticket sold, after paying a $500 installation fee for the Lotto terminals.
Ping Yuen is among a cluster of top Lotto retailers within a few blocks of each other. Four of the state’s top 10 Lotto retailers are in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Another top Lotto retailer--second to Ping Yuen during the survey period--was George’s Liquor in Los Angeles’ Chinatown.
“It’s hardly surprising that Lotto is being heavily played by Chinese,” said Vicki Abt, a sociology professor at Pennsylvania State University and co-author of “The Business of Risk.” “After all, the Chinese invented dice.”
“Most of the Asian people, not just the Chinese, like to gamble,” said Kenneth Lau, 30, co-owner of Best Food Co., a tiny grocery store in San Francisco’s Chinatown that sold $22,725 worth of Lotto tickets during the two-week period. “It’s the custom.”
Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Thailand are among Asian countries that have had lotteries for years, according to Guy Simonis, president of Canada’s National Lotto.
They’re Used to It
“People are used to what ‘pick six’ means from playing in their own countries,” said Paul Lee, 36, co-owner of New Lun Wah Co., a San Francisco grocery store that sold $17,347 worth of Lotto tickets during the two-week period. Customers walking along busy Stockton Street don’t even have to leave the sidewalk to buy a ticket because Lee’s terminal sits on an outdoor counter near a display of vegetables.
Lee said the Lotto tickets are sometimes more attractive sales items than food. They don’t spoil and they sell consistently.
“I don’t have to worry about losing, like I do with vegetables, because Chinese love to gamble,” he said.
But others point out that the Chinese are hardly the only ones in the state buying Lotto tickets. Of the $14 million in Lotto tickets sold by 5,000 retailers during the two-week period, only about 1% was collected by the five Chinatown stores.
Like Football Pools
“I don’t think Asians have any peculiar affinity for gambling more than any other racial group,” said Him Mark Lai, archivist for the Asian-American Studies Library at the University of California, Berkeley. “Caucasians gamble just as much, like in football pools.”
However, census figures on San Francisco’s Chinatown indicate that many area residents match the profile of the typical scratch-off lottery player compiled last summer in a study by The Times.
The Times report, based on a computer-assisted study of sales of scratch-off tickets and the results of a Los Angeles Times Poll, found that lottery players were more likely to come from the ranks of secretaries, salespeople and manual laborers than from professional and management circles. Two out of three players had a high school education or less.
Similarly, about 60% of the residents of San Francisco’s Chinatown never graduated from high school, according to city planner Lulu Mabelitini. In 1979, the median income in the 30-block area bounded by Broadway Avenue and Montgomery, Powell and Bush streets was $10,101, about $5,700 less than the citywide average, she said. Three-quarters of the residents are foreign-born, and 93% are Asian.
Bigger Jackpots
Lottery officials have said they expect Lotto to attract more middle-class and upper-middle-class players than the scratch-off game--in part because jackpots are expected to exceed the scratch-off game totals.
Many of the Lotto players in Ping Yuen Drug Store appear to be typical scratch-off players.
Eng Ngoot Yu, a 50-year-old immigrant from Burma who works in a factory sewing clothes, said she spends $30 a week for Lotto tickets at Best Food Co.
“It doesn’t cost a lot,” warehouse worker Chen said. “If you buy nothing, you have no chance for a better living.”
The owner of a business down the street from Ping Yuen said Ping Yuen’s success has hurt his business, but not enough to make him apply to the Lottery to sell tickets.
“I don’t want anything to do with it, and I’m sorry so many Chinese are wasting their money on it,” he said, declining to give his name. “Last week, all the kids got together and spent $500 on Lotto tickets.”
