Toronto bakery serves Powerball tickets to customers who spend more than $20
'We’ve decided the baker’s gonna give away the dough,' owner of World Class Bakers says
World Class Bakers are known for their butter tarts and banana bread but that's not the only reason for the lineups inside and outside their Toronto store on Tuesday.
The St. Clair Avenue West bakery has decided to spread some cheer by giving away hundreds of tickets for the $1.5 billion US Powerball lottery in the United States to customers who spend at least $20. The draw for the largest jackpot in history takes place Wednesday.
"We've decided the baker's gonna give away the dough," owner Lisa Guluzian told CBC News. "I hope that someone from this group wins. We're gonna take it all away from the Americans."
One customer who didn't give his name was one of 500 lucky people who got a ticket. The bakery said all the tickets had been claimed by mid-afternoon Tuesday.
'Chance of a lifetime'
"It's a chance of a lifetime," the man told CBC News. "I waited in line for about an hour."
"It's January, everyone's depressed after the holidays but look at all the cheerful people here," she said. "Whether or not they win, they're having a good time for a few minutes. It's a little tiresome but it's fun."
Guluzian said she bought a ticket for herself and said that if she won, she would "give some to her staff, pay off the bills, pay off the rent and do whatever is necessary to keep them in business."
If you didn't get a Powerball ticket on Tuesday, don't worry.
Manager Suzanne King said the promotion was so successful that she was planning on driving to Buffalo Tuesday evening to buy 500 more tickets.
The Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs the game, says the odds of having the winning Powerball ticket are one in more than 292 million.
With files from Canadian Press