‘Smartphone repair shop’ near where I live. Has always light on (24/7 confirmed), but nobody inside. At times an ad flag (those 2mt tall with the shop name on it) comes out and is near the entrance.
One time I managed to catch a guy behind the counter and entered for asking if they had some spare parts (I think it was a battery) and he looked fucking disgusted just because I dared to enter. Useless to say, they did not have any spare parts.
As of today (4 or 5 months), not a single client entered.
Also, that shop that sells completely random stuff (chandeliers, dolls, weird statues, horrible carpets and so much more junk), never seen it open but have been there for like at least 30 years.
Also, that shop that sells completely random stuff (chandeliers, dolls, weird stautes statues, horrible carpets and so much more junk), never seen it open but have been there for like at least 30 years.
Oh yeah, we also have this in my city, in quite a prime spot of the old town. However since it’s such an old shop, I’m not sure if it just belongs to a family that owns (not rents) that space since generations (and isn’t really sure what to do with it except for “selling” that stuff).
Yeah that was my first thought, I’ve seen a ton of those old stores that are just abandoned with inventory still inside, even went exploring one once, second floor was starting to fall in, I didn’t dare enter the basement because it felt like the beginning of a slasher movie… Owner lives a few houses down the road and just continues paying his taxes so he doesn’t care…
Also, that shop that sells completely random stuff (chandeliers, dolls, weird statues, horrible carpets and so much more junk), never seen it open but have been there for like at least 30 years.
We had one of those. It turns out it was owned by a rental agent, and he just used it to store the random stuff he’d use to furnish appartments with to rent out.
There’s a place ik that sells VAST pizzas - a slice of that stuff is maybe 70cm long - and they somehow sell each slice for $5. Definitely suspicious profit margins.
Like from crust to the tip of the slice?
There’s a gas station just outside of town where the price is always ridiculous. It’s not uncommon for it to be over a dollar more per gallon (about 36¢ CAD/€0,23 more per litre) than the gas station just one block away. I don’t know how it stays in business if they’re not doing something sketchy.
We have a gas station that’s almost a dollar less than competition and opposite corners of another gas station. It always boggles my mind how anyone would go to the more expensive one given you can see the prices of both at the same time.
Rug stores. There’s around twelve of them along a couple miles of road. How many rug stores could one city possibly need?
My ex wife would love that
I knew a guy who drove a taxi for a company in New York back in the 70s and one day he got in a wreck and totaled his cab, and a very large very Italian man came and told him not to worry about it and that everything would be handled and there was no need for paperwork, and that was the end of it.
Wendy’s. I have no idea how they are still in business. Almost similar for Arby’s.
they are slightly more affordable than bk, and sometimes you just want chili at 3am
Do you mean an individual wendys or the entire franchise? I quite enjoy wendys, one of the best fast food chains in my opinion.
On the other hand, arbys is gross and is 100% a laundering scheme.
We have several Community Market arrangements in my town. People who make homemade stuff, like decorations, knitwear, art, crafts, jam, soap etc can book a stand for a day or several. It’s extremely exhausting to sit on a shitty chair for 8 hours straight in a crowded place, and especially in the Christmas market when you are half outside and temperatures are close to freezing, so most people book two days in a row at most.
This one group of people just books end-to-end for the entire market duration. Like, weeks. They show up, fill their stand with TEMU crap, and take turns to sit at the stand and consistently sell nothing to nobody.
My town has a population of about 2,000 people. There are five dedicated car washes within a 10-mile radius of my house, with two more under construction.
I honestly do not understand car washes and how they are supposed to turn a profit.
With drug money, duh.
Haven’t you seen Breaking Bad?
The drug trade is a trillion dollar industry. Got to wash them somewhere. Where better than at a washer?
Yup. Really easy to stuff some cash in the till and declare it as income with a car wash. Actually clean 100 cars a day? Buy enough cleaning supplies for 130 cars. Report on your records that you sold 130 washes. Dump the excess chemicals down the drain or just use them abundantly during washes. Sure, if you claim to wash a thousand cars when you only washed 100, then that could get you caught quickly. But if you’re not greedy, you could keep such a setup going for a very long time.
Biggest cost is the startup and then employees, with an occasional big maintenance repair. Buying cleaning products in bulk? The cost will make you feel cheated for what you pay for a quart to a gallon.
I get that, i used to service a small-ish car wash, and the amout of times something broke or didn’t work or the cost of osmosis filters alone was staggering to me. Always thinking about how many people would have to wash a car to just get that money back.
Theres a pizza store near me that always sells the weirdest pizzas, they have beans on pizza and just about everything else. Nobody ever goes in and ive never seen any deliveries leave.
Baked Beans on a pizza is great. It’s like fancy beans on toast
Ive acturally tried it and tbh beans belong on pizza
It would be more unsettling to see people enter, but never leave.
There was a famous 24h florist in my city that everyone joked had to be a front for something. (Turned out it was drugs.)
Coincidentally, there’s a shop in my neighbourhood that’s also floral-themed and suspicious as heck: it says it sells flowers, but I only see potted plants (that don’t appear to be for sale) and earrings on display stands (which do appear to maybe be for sale) when I peek in the window. I’ve lived here for many years, and I’ve never once seen it open, no matter what time of day or day of the week I walk past. With rent constantly rising and quite a lot of businesses in the street closing or moving away, it seems highly suspicious that this one could be turning a profit without ever being open.
As a kid there was a pizzeria everyone at school said was a money laundering operation, no one knew of anyone who bought pizza there and it was always open… thinking about it now, the town had about 10 000 people living in it, and there was 6 pizzerias and that particular one was in a very odd place and no signage and i have never seen a menu form them anywhere
i work at a bank, and there’s a restaurant owner who brings in so much cash, despite his place having terrible food. then again, old people may just like it
There’s a video rental shop in Houston. Don’t understand how they’ve stayed in business for so long.
Poor people
we have what seems like about 15 mattress stores along one stretch of road, and we also have a store that sells nothing but bar stools. I’ve often thought that about those places…
There was a podcast episode about this. I want to say freakonomics or similar.
Iirc, the margins on mattresses are crazy. People will comparison shop, not realizing that many of the stores are subsidiaries of the same company. Stores often don’t have the exact mattress (different models at different stores making pricing matching impossible) so you’re down to making gut decisions.
The margins might be high, but I can’t imagine there is enough business to justify that many stores. How often do people actually go buy new mattresses?
Once or twice a day
I’ve heard most of the shops sell the same matrassen, but they just give them different names so you cannot compare prices. Which means you can make prices anything you want as long as you have a somewhat believable story about the quality.
I feel this way about mattress stores. Can’t prove it either.
