Payoff Reads · Lottery

How much can regulars spend on lottery before they skip the coffee and snacks?

Your regulars walk in with a total amount in mind to spend in-store. Find their "frugal point:" the amount of lottery on a trip, in a single ticket or several, where they start skipping the coffee and snacks. Then find the changes that can grow the basket around the ticket. Most take a week or less:

The clerk: upsell prompts on lottery-only trips
The counter: where the machine, the decals and the $1 to $5 tickets sit
The aisles: signage with attachment offers by the coffee and hot food, like "buy 5 coffees, get a $2 scratcher"
The win moment: what add-ons to offer when a regular cashes in a winner

Silent film: how a read finds when lottery tickets get added to the basket, and when they crowd it out.

What your numbers can't show

Your POS shows what regulars bought. It can't show what they skipped.

What you have: item-level detail on every lottery trip, so you can see how often regulars add something, and what that was. In NACS figures, lottery shoppers' baskets average $10.35, vs. $6.29 for all other shoppers, and 95% buy something besides tickets.
What it can't show: what the regular would have bought after buying a smaller lottery ticket. That tradeoff happens in the regular's head, before anything rings up, and it's real: a study of household budgets found lottery spending is paid for mainly by cutting other spending.¹
- Did they buy a little less, or a lot less, because of the perceived cost of the "expensive" ticket they did buy?
- Would they have added a higher-margin item, like a breakfast sandwich?
- Comparing big-ticket trips with small ones can't isolate the effect of the ticket purchase alone.
What the read shows: how much each extra dollar spent on tickets takes away from the rest of the regular's mental basket,² the total amount they have in mind to spend in-store, by how much lottery is on the trip, store, cashier and day of the month. It's measured from moments when ticket spend changed by chance, like a jackpot climbing past $1 billion.

Why the answer matters

5.5¢What a store keeps of each dollar of lottery sales, in commission.
30¢What it keeps of each dollar of food, bev and snacks, at a typical blended margin. Hot food and coffee earn more.

The math$3 food or beverage add-on = $16 of lottery tickets

Both earn your store about 90 cents: the add-on at a 30% blended margin, the tickets at a 5.5% commission.

Try it: where a $15 trip goes

Lottery $5Food, bev and snacks $10Your margin on the trip: $3.28, a 22% blended margin

If the trip stays at $15, every $1 that moves from food, bev and snacks to tickets costs you about 25 cents of margin.

What lands on your desk

Lottery, as Seurat reads it

14 stores add profit
22 show no significant effect
6 cost money

Heartland Markets is a fictional chain. Every number on this page is made up to show the format.

Heartland Markets sells lottery tickets at all 42 stores. The read used 2 years of its transactions, 5.5 million lottery trips, including every big Powerball and Mega Millions run and the April 2025 Mega Millions price change.

The answer, in three lines:

Heartland's frugal point is $10 of lottery on a trip, whether that's a single $10 scratch-off or 10 $1s. Below it, tickets get added to the basket: for every $10 of tickets, regulars skip about 35 cents of food, bev and snacks. Above it, they skip about $3.70, which costs you $1.10 of margin for 55 cents of commission.
Across the chain, extra ticket sales roughly break even: the trips over $10 give back what the trips under $10 add.
Lottery trips at the 10 best stores include food, bev or snacks 2x as often as they do at the 10 weakest (56% vs. 28%), with the same type of customer. Closing just half of each store's gap in this attachment behavior is worth about $220,000 a year in margin.

What regulars skip, by how much lottery is on the trip

Each $10 of tickets earns you 55 cents of commission, and each $1 of food, bev and snacks a regular skips costs you about 30 cents of margin. Green: the tickets earn more than the skipped items cost. Red: they earn less.

store by store (6 of 42)

Store	Frugal point	Lottery trips with food, bev or snacks	Profit per $10 of tickets	Verdict
Store 25, Maple Dr	$20	58%	+31¢	Adds profit
Store 17, Linn St	$20	31%	+28¢	Adds profit
Store 9, Boyson Rd	$15	54%	+25¢	Adds profit
Store 2, Oak Ave	$10	52%	−2¢	No significant effect
Store 23, Hwy 6 E	$10	29%	−38¢	Costs money
Store 24, Hwy 30 W	$10	27%	−47¢	Costs money

Profit per $10 of tickets is the 55-cent commission, minus the margin on what regulars skipped. Attachment and the frugal point don't always line up. Store 2's regulars add food, bev or snacks on 52% of lottery trips, about as often as Store 9's, but Store 2's frugal point is $10 vs. $15 at Store 9: past $10 of tickets, regulars there keep the coffee and skip the sandwich. At Store 17, regulars add something on just 31% of lottery trips, and the tickets aren't the reason: the frugal point there is $20.

By store type: the 6 highway stores share the chain's $10 frugal point, but $20-and-up tickets are half of their lottery sales, so most of their lottery sales land past it, and extra ticket sales cost money. At the other 36, they add profit or have no significant effect.

By cashier: in the same store and the same hours, regulars bought food, bev or snacks on 52% of lottery trips with the best cashier and 26% with the weakest, 2x as often.

At the win moment: when a regular cashed in a winner, 15 cents of each winning dollar went to food, bev and snacks in the same transaction, and 54 cents went straight back into tickets.

On big-jackpot days: inside sales rose 6% at the 6 highway stores and fell 3% at the 12 smallest stores, where the lottery line put off quick trips.

KeepFixStopWhat to do: keep the $1 to $5 scratch-offs at the front counter, beside the impulse items. Fix the clerk's upsell prompt on lottery-only trips at the 20 stores below the chain average, and open a lottery-only line at the 12 smallest stores when a jackpot runs. Stop featuring $20-and-up tickets at the 6 highway stores.

The confidence band shows the 95% confidence interval. When the band spans zero, the result isn't statistically significant. Heartland Markets is a fictional chain. Every number on this page is made up to show the format.

How the read works

Every regular walks in with a total amount in mind to spend in-store: the mental basket. To see how much of it the tickets take, the read needs trips where ticket spend changed for reasons that had nothing to do with the regular's wallet.

1
Read every lottery trip: what else was in the basket, by store, hour, cashier and how much lottery was on the trip, from a single POS export.
2
Find the chance moments: jackpots that climb when nobody wins, the lottery's own price changes and game launches, random prize sizes, and which cashier is on shift. Mega Millions went from $2 to $5 a play in April 2025.
3
Compare like with like: the same regulars in big-jackpot weeks vs. small ones, before and after a price change, after a $5 win vs. a $50 win. If a big jackpot adds $10 of tickets and takes $1.90 off their food, bev and snacks, that $1.90 is what the tickets cost.
4
Find the frugal point: the amount of lottery on a trip where what regulars skip jumps, store by store, and evaluate what it's worth, based on your commission rate and your margins.
5
Test the read: a placebo test reruns it on made-up jackpot dates. With no real jackpot to find, it should show no effect. If it shows one, the read isn't working properly, and we tell you.

Why not just compare regulars who buy big tickets with those who buy small ones? Big tickets and big baskets both show up on paydays. The regular who buys $40 of tickets on payday also has more cash for coffee and snacks that day, which hides the real crowding-out effect of the tickets. A jackpot run changes how much regulars spend on tickets without changing what's in their wallet. Counter resets, machine relocations and remodels are read the way every Seurat read works: comparing each store vs. its twin, a predictive model built to show what that store would have sold had those changes never happened, so we can compare those predictions vs. the actuals.

Can your lottery data be read?

It depends on how your POS records lottery, more than on how many stores you run.

What your POS records	What the read answers
Scratch-offs scanned by game, draw games and payouts, with cashier IDs	Everything on this page
Lottery rung on a single department key, with cashier IDs	Everything except the split by game
Payouts paid outside the sale	Everything except the win moment
No lottery lines in the POS	Store-level reads, from the lottery's settlement reports

We check your export on the first call, before you commit to anything.

Scope this read

What we need, and what stays with you

We need:

Transactions with date, time, store and cashier IDs, 1 to 2 years of them. Two years covers the April 2025 Mega Millions price change.
Lottery lines: scratch-offs by game, draw games and payouts, or the lottery department key
Member IDs you've scrambled (hashed) yourself, where you have them, including on lottery trips that earn no points
Tender type and amount tendered
Dates of counter resets, machine installs or relocations, remodels, self-checkout and food launches
Your margins, as percentages, and your lottery commission rate

We never ask for:

Names, phone numbers or anything else that identifies a shopper
Card numbers or payment data
Your chain's totals or your P&L

How we handle your data →

How long it takes

About 2 weeks from the day we receive your data, then a 60-minute readout with whoever needs to hear it.
We scope it to your chain on a short call: which stores, which games, which changes.

Scope this read Book a call

Questions buyers ask us

Is this about selling more tickets? No. The money is in what regulars buy alongside the tickets. The read shows where tickets get added to the basket and where they crowd out food, bev and snacks, so you know which tickets to feature, and where.
What about jackpot runs? They're rare, and they bring a different crowd: jackpot chasers come for the draw games more than the regulars' scratch-offs. The read shows which stores gain inside sales on big-jackpot days and which lose them to long lines, and what to change at the counter before the next run.
Does selling a big winner help the store? It helps lottery sales. After a store sells a big winner, its sales of that game rise 12% to 38% the next week, and some of the lift lasts up to 40 weeks (Guryan and Kearney, 2008). The read adds what nobody has measured: what it does to inside sales.
Can we give loyalty points on lottery tickets? Usually not on the tickets themselves, and the rules vary by state. Giving a ticket as the reward for buying something else, like a punch card that ends in a free $2 scratcher, is allowed in several states. The read works without lottery points, as long as members scan their ID on lottery trips.
Does any of this break lottery rules? The changes the read tests stay inside them: ticket prices stay at face value, deals go on the item bought with the ticket, prompts follow the trip rather than how much someone plays, and relocating a lottery-owned machine may need your lottery rep's sign-off.
What if the read shows some tickets cost us money? That's a private finding. You see every result first, and nothing goes anywhere without your approval.
Do we have to connect any systems? No. One export from your POS or back office, sent however your IT team prefers.
Who does the work? We do. Your team runs the export, shares it with us, and comes back to hear our readout.

After this read

Lottery also becomes a standard line in your other reads: what a remodel, self-checkout, online ordering or a food launch did to lottery trips. The next read usually runs on the same export you've already sent.
To try a change at a few stores before rolling it out across the chain, like a punch card by the coffee, the Pre-Launch Pilot Read sets up the test and reads the result.
Reads cost less in sets of 3, and your first read will be credited toward a multi-read discount.

Scope several changes →Start with one read →Test a change first →How monitoring works →

Sources: ¹ Kearney, "State lotteries and consumer behavior," Journal of Public Economics, 2005. ² Stilley, Inman and Wakefield, "Planning to make unplanned purchases? The role of in-store slack in budget deviation," Journal of Consumer Research, 2010. NACS, lottery shopper figures. Guryan and Kearney, "Gambling at lucky stores," American Economic Review, 2008. AP, Mega Millions price change, April 2025.