Friday night’s Mega Millions lottery jackpot of $680 million is the ninth biggest in the history of the game, which bodegas around the Bronx say also means big business for them.<\/p>\n
“When (the cashier) told me that the pot was so big, I said let me get an extra ticket,” said Nicole White, from Soundview.<\/p>\n
White was just one of a line of customers making their way into 912 Jairo Deli Grocery in Soundview.<\/p>\n
“When the lottery’s like that, it’s good for us because you know, everybody’s crazy, and we get more customers,” laughed Jairo Troncoso, who owns the store.<\/p>\n
Shops get to keep a small piece of the money from every lotto ticket sold, and at $5 each for Mega Millions, it adds up, so Troncoso says his staff makes sure every customer knows when there is a high jackpot.<\/p>\n
“$500 million! $600 million! $700 million! We tell everybody,” he said.<\/p>\n
But Troncoso also says the gains go beyond that, since “when the people come to buy a ticket, sometimes, they get other stuff – juice, beer, sandwich, whatever, you know.”<\/p>\n
While that means it would be good for business if nobody wins and the jackpot keeps growing, Troncoso says he is rooting for somebody from his story to hit it.<\/p>\n
Partially, because the lotto sends the store that sold the winning ticket a percentage, and also, Troncoso says, “maybe (the customer) comes by and gives me a tip or something.”<\/p>\n
Troncoso says at least so far, the biggest prize he has sold was a $300,000 scratch-off ticket.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Friday night’s Mega Millions lottery jackpot of $680 million is the ninth biggest in the history of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,617,840,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-15543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-lottery","10":"tag-mega-millions","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-the-bronx","15":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","16":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}