Asklemmy

There are a ton of gambling places where you never see anyone walking in. It's a public secret these are money laundering operations from some well connected crime syndicate.

There's a microwave repair store in my city.

There's always one person there when I dive by but never any customers. There's a neon open/closed sign that changes daily so someone is there.

No clue what exactly is going on there.

Theres a video rental place down the way from me in Vancouver, BC. First, Vancouver is expensive as hell. Our average 1 bdrm is roughly 3k a month. This guy has a prime location, in Vancouver, on a busy street, with a video rental store. Who rents movies these days? Maybe some, but surely not enough to keep him afloat. It's not an adult video store either.

A handful of restaurants which definitely can't afford the amount of people working there and the interior. They always operate the same way: the food doesn't taste good, expensive interior and (many) more personnel than customers.

Unless they all have a philanthropist millionaire as a sponsor, I suspect they launder money. Apparently this is quite common in Germany because hard cash is still common here. Even large sums of money.

Matress stores.

Never see anyone in them, never see anyone in the parking lot, and every time i've ever gone in there was one person working there who acted surprised as hell someone came in.

and yet they are always expanding and building more locations

Shady as shit no-tell motel, overpriced as hell for where it's located. Pulls in maybe 5 guests a week, but the owners flashing about in a shiny new car.

For decades there was a funeral parlor down the street from my house. Right in the middle of a busy residential neighborhood in the city. There's only on-street parking and they had two spots in front of their building reserved for funerals. Only no one ever parked there. No cars, limos, hearses, anything. A neon open sign turned on every day over their door but no one ever came or went.

My parents had a tenant who was an elderly gentleman with few relatives. When he died, my mom called the parlor to arrange the funeral but no one answered. She left a message on their machine but no one ever called back. We weren't fully surprised because we'd been calling it a front for years, but mom was unconvinced until then.

The building got fully renovated a few years ago and we actually saw a funeral taking place, so they've upped their game.

Cellphone cases stores

There are several! It's kind of a problem in my city but none of the civilians care because somehow they have the best food

There is this wig shop in a very popular and pricey area in my town. It's been there since my mom was a child.

The wigs exposed are old fashioned, ugly, never change and we've never seen the shop open. Its super weird. I'm convinced it has to be a cover for something.

Every single Mattress Firm

I used to live in a town with no less than three scuba shops.

It was not on the water.

There's a neighborhood restaurant near me that is unreasonably bad. You can't tell the staff apart from people who are just hanging around - and you do need to figure it out cause no one is coming to take your order. They're dirty, disinterested and rude. Food is typically some piece of meat and fries which is served swimming in sauce, and often it's way overdone or cold / raw. They're often missing ingredients. You just get the feeling overall that they're truly not interested in having customers.

Slightly related: I just assume any business that operates on a cash-only basis is commiting tax fraud.

The old pizza place used to be owned by a big drug dealer and you could rig up, order a special topping o. The top and you could get weed over the counter.

Then my local chicken fast food restaurant did the same but you got to go through the drive Thu.

They had to close it down and deep clean because they were selling everything lol.

We had a restaurant on the corner that was open 20 hours a week. They closed a few years ago. I miss their fries.

Mattress Firm

Ask any Australian about Red Rooster. franchise chain that can be found all over the place, yet no restaurant ever seems to have customers either in store or the drivethrough, at least not in the volumes you would expect they require to stay open. Its a real enigma, but their chicken is S-tier

My barber used to have basicallyno customers, his family members as the employees (shite) and one day went ahead and got cctv cameras installed and had a backroom that was well protected. Later the shop and the people mysteriously disappeared suddenly.

It's a public secret that "Winkel 137" (EN: "Shop 137") in Rotterdam is a front for illegal activity, most likely drugs. It's never open during normal hours, the shelves are barely stocked, and no one ever really enters the place. It's been there for as long as I can remember though.

If you look at the place in Google maps you can even see some weird ducts coming out of the wall on the above floor, presumably to clear out some of the vapors coming from the shop.

In the town I live in one of the worst kept secrets is a small hundred year old mixed use 2 or 3 story building. The Laundromat at the bottom with a handful of old washing machines and dryers is always locked and never actually open. Former tenants have publicly stated it's purely a front because the landlord doesn't want to bother with a commercial tenant but because of the zoning it needs a commercial space on the ground level so they maintain a fake laundromat

In the city I grew up in, there’s a Chinese restaurant near my home that never gets packed, not even on busy weekends. I’ve also never seen more than 2 customers at a time eating there. And yet, it’s outlasted every single restaurant in the vicinity for 3 decades. That, and there’s always an expensive car or two parked in front.

So I was about to write about a very weird hat shop on the ground floor of an exclusive apartment building in the most hip neighbourhood in my city. They have like 15 hats on display, no customers ever, three bored workers scrolling through their phones all day. But I went to their website, which they do have and it seems most of their business is actually distributing Stetson products and other premium leather goods in this part of Europe, so I guess they can very well afford having one brick-and-mortar display store.

Yeah. Just about every tech startup with its own pretentious wall paintings and billboards and front-facing flair.

The loudest ones tend to be the ones doing basic shit like not paying property taxes around here.

Burrito place near me. They cost $3 for a regular and then $5 for a specialty. No way they're surviving on that much money renting in a strip mall. I only ever see 1 or 2 other people in there at most even during lunch or dinner

I live in Italy, pick one at random, that's it

There's a well known 24 hour florist in Melbourne.

Come on now, who needs flowers at 3am?

This tiny hidden pizzaria place that is always closed for private meetings. Called Pizzaria Mafiosi. Hidding in plain sight.

There is a carpet store and restaurant near my house, and in the three years I've lived here I can't recall seeing anyone buy anything or even visit either store a single time.

Once my partner and I actually walked over to check it out and the carpet store was closed and all of the windows were covered. It was like 4 in the afternoon on a Wednesday, so I can't imagine why it would be closed.

There's supposedly a lot of Russian gang activity in my area, so I'm assuming it's just a front for them but I've never really confirmed it.

Used to go to a night club that must have been up to something. The prices, both membership and drinks were so low it is either fake booze or another income. The drinks seemed fine.

There's an ice-cream shop in my town that I 100% know is a front because the partner of its owner got done for drugs dealing, sex trafficking, and possession of illegal firearms a couple of years after it opened.

Not my town, but there is a junk shop in main railway station, (sells clothing, shit like t-shirts with weed prints, pipes, random little trinkets). I can only assume rent is very expensive in such a central location, and I really can't think of any way how that place is profitable. I only visited once as a teen since they sold us weed pipes even though I was underage. -There is a actual tobacco shop nearby, with much better selection. -There is never any customers -None of the products sold are very valuable, so they would have to sell lot of them to make profit -If you really wanted to buy cringe t-shirt, there is many shops for that around as well, all of which are well known compared to this one

Many business have gone under during the years in that location, replaced with others, but somehow this one place has been there over 10 years.

This one time at oh fuck it just read this shit.

Hartford Police made a major drug bust at a business called Hot Mama's posing as a restaurant on Franklin Avenue shortly before 7 p.m.

https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/hartford-county/hartford/hartford-drug-bust-marijuana-fentanyl-cocaine-investigation/520-d367ba2c-cc87-45b4-ab97-76dd652c54da

There's this building near my old place. It's old, it's somewhat tall, with a great big hall inside, looks like. LOTS of religious paraphernalia and icons about. It's a little creepy.

No one ever comes or goes during the week; only on weekends. And then it's a steady stream. I don't know how they can afford the space they're taking up, but they seem to. I worried it could be a front for gambling or child-trafficking, but they call themselves a church. Definitely seems sus. It's been on Reddit, actually, a few times.

Just kidding, it's the famous Knox Presbyterian with the sayings everyone sends everyone.