Manalapan Store Sells Winning Lotto Ticket 3 Times In 5 Years

MANALAPAN, NJ — You've got to start buying your lottery tickets at the Soda King in Manalapan: This unassuming Gordons Corner convenience store sold a winning $248,352 lottery ticket last week, the NJ state Lottery announced Monday.

Incredibly, this is the third time in the past five years the Manalapan Soda King has sold a top-earning winning ticket: In 2013, the Soda King sold a $1 million-winning lottery ticket, and last July, the same store sold a $500,000 winning lottery ticket. In that instance, a local Manalapan woman, Karen O., and her husband were the winners. Read: Manalapan Woman Wins $500,000 In NJ Lottery

"I don't know what we're doing, but our customers are very lucky," said Soda King owner Dilip Shah Monday morning. He acknowledged that his store has sold several winning tickets over the past five years.

The Soda King is located at 300 Gordons Corner Rd., #24 Yorktowne Shopping Center in Manalapan.

The ticket sold last week at the Soda King matched all five numbers drawn from the Sunday, Feb. 25 drawing: The winning numbers were: 3, 13, 19, 20 and 25 and the XTRA number was 2.

Shah told Patch the customer who bought the $248,352 winning ticket is "a very regular customer who comes in every morning and lives in Manalapan," but did not want his identity revealed.

Shah said the man came in Monday morning, and Shah checked the ticket and confirmed that he won the big prize. He said the man did not believe him at first.

Past Patch reporting:

Soda King Sells $1M Lotto Ticket, Are You the Winner?

Manalapan Store Sells $500K Winning Lottery Ticket

Exterior of the Manalapan Soda King via Google Earth.