By Rich Bockmann
Queens’ luckiest company is expanding.
Officials are predicting Wonton Food Inc. will complete an overhaul of its Long Island City fortune cookie factory in April with the help of more than $1 million in state tax incentives.
Wonton, which bills itself as the country’s largest manufacturer of fortune cookies, noodles and wrappers, was awarded a total of $1.08 million in various tax credits last year through Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Regional Economic Development Council.
The company is well-known for its famous Golden Bowl brand of fortune cookies, which carries the tag line, “Fortune knocks but once … but Golden Bowl Brand Fortune Cookies knocks three times.”
That motto took on a new meaning a few years ago when more than 100 lottery winners felt the knock of prosperity.
Lottery officials became suspicious when an unusual number of Powerball players from the March 30, 2005, drawing who all played the same numbers began claiming second-place prizes.
The game usually has about four or five second-place winners, but this time around 110 players claimed the prizes.
“The show ‘Lost’ was popular at that time, so we thought maybe we hit the show’s numbers, but we checked and that wasn’t the case,” said Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Multi-State Lottery Association.
A representative from the Tennessee lottery finally called in and said a player had picked the winning combination — 22-28-32-33-39 — off a fortune cookie, and a check with other states were confirmed.
It turned out players missed hitting the jackpot by just one number. The cookie recommended 40 rather than 42 for the red Powerball number. If they had picked all six numbers correctly, the 110 winners would have split the $13.8 million jackpot.
Strutt said he reached out to Wonton Food and suggested that instead of printing the same number, they use the same technology Powerball relies on to generate its winning numbers: a device that uses a Geiger counter to measure decaying radioactive material.
“It’s the only true random number generator, the only true random event in the universe,” he said, adding he believed Wonton simply stopped printing the same number in every cookie.
The company will use the tax breaks to upgrade its noodle factory in Brooklyn and its 4,500-square-foot space on 37th Street in Long Island City, as well as provide employee training.
Reach reporter Rich Bockmann by e-mail at rbockmann@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.
