There used to be a burger joint in my town that had terrible burgers, but they were ridiculously cheap. No idea how they made money, but they were always Russian guys and suits there. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
There is a super famous, incredibly mediocre destination BBQ restaurant in Central Texas that is famous for an all-you-can-eat family-style meal. For decades, they only accepted cash. Way, way longer than made sense. Like into the 2020s I think.
Their main menu item was all-you-can eat (hard to quantify number of sales), only members of the family that ran the place were allowed to count the take and the receipts at the end of each shift, and they only took cash.
I fully believe they were either laundering money or evading taxes by under-reporting. But then they opened a few satellite branches, including one at the airport, and started having to be more careful as they expanded.
Sweet shop right next to my old college. Never once saw anyone go in, it was never open, yet always fully stocked.
you mean the 12 car washes that all sprung up at the same exact time all within 5 miles of each other?
the same ones that have practically zero cars driving through them because they opened at the height of 2020 where nobody was driving anymore?
the same ones that somehow weathered a bust market for carwashes for 3 years?
the same ones that are owned by two guys with the same last name that look suspiciously like retired mafia?
you mean those places?
nah, they’re just a couple brothers that were really successful before the pandemic.
Mattress Firm
Not quite the same but I used to work at a local, family owned supermarket chain that is now out of business. I started at one of the busiest locations, but after I moved apartments I transferred to another location that was out in the 'burbs. At the first location I worked at, all our equipment was well maintained, stock was reasonable, stuff seemed normal.
At the suburban location, our equipment was all falling apart. The roof leaked. The other stores sent us their overstock and charged it to our departments. I was in the deli, and one day the contracted maintenance guy was there and I asked if he could take a look at one of the meat slicers. He said sorry, corporate told him not to do any work at this location that they hadn’t pre-approved.
My first hypothesis was that this location didn’t make any money, and that’s why they didn’t want to spend to fix it. One day I decided to ask the store manager about it—he was pretty chill and we talked sometimes, so I figured he wouldn’t mind. I said “Does this store actually make any money?” and he said “Well, let me put it this way: the numbers I report to corporate show that every department here, except floral, makes a profit every month. And then the numbers they put out in the quarterly reports show that we’ve never made a profit since we opened.”
“Where does the money go?” I asked.
“That’s above my pay grade,” he said.
I’m convinced someone was embezzling funds. A couple years after I left, the whole chain closed one day with no notice to the employees.
One pizza place by my old house in the bad part of Minneapolis always had a bunch of cars in the parking lot. One day I decide to try it; I manage to find a parking spot, walk in, and the place is pretty much empty. I order a pizza, take it home, and it’s one of the worst pizzas I’ve ever eaten. That place simply cannot be a legitimate business.
Had some friends who love to try out new places to eat. They pulled into a standard country pub on a roadtrip, nothing unusual about it to make it seem any different to any country Aussie pub. They ordered a standard pub lunch. The big hairy dude behind the bar grumbled at them and then went out to the kitchen. 20 minutes later they are served the worst meal of their lives and 5 minutes after that a large amount of motorcycles pulls into the parking lot.
They left soon after. The place was a biker gang front and all the locals knew to avoid it.
On a related note, there’s a $2 junk shop in my town where you can sit at the bus stop out front in the morning and watch every tweaker in town walk in, spend 2 mins inside, and then walk out looking much happier, 10 seconds later, carrying nothing.
It is so obviously an over-the-counter methamphetamine dealership that the entire bus stop is known as ‘Meth Corner’ to everyone in town.
We have a jewelry store in town that is by appointment only. During the day there’s always a high end car parked at the back of the store but you never see anyone in there. When my buddy was getting ready to propose he tried calling to get an appointment and it went straight to voicemail with a message that said private clients only and then beeped. He left a message but never heard back. I’ve never met anyone who has seen anyone go in or come out of that place.
Local Italian hotdog place that rarely open and when it does it for 1 hour only.
Reminds me of a story I once read about a couple being on holiday in Italy. They went in a local pizzeria and were the only ones in there, they got pretty shady looks from everyone, but still ordered a pizza. It was the best pizza they ever had. Also, for the whole time they were there, no customer came there and it was silent.
Kansas City…a city full of fantastic BBQ.
There’s the one place with trash BBQ and no customers. I always wondered…
Which place? We have so many trash BBQ places with no customers. Well, we also have a lot of trash BBQ places that get customers, too.
Wyandot Barbeque.
Yes that is spelled correctly. They didn’t even spell Wyandotte or Barbecue correctly.
Don’t get me wrong. Love a hole-in-the-wall bbq place that’s secretly great. That place ain’t it.
It seems to me the people who love it went as a kid. I guess it’s nostalgia?
There is a trading card shop here - in a village of 2500.
How?
Idk if 10% of the town patronizes it regularly and there’s no other shops around that’s like 250 customers coming in year round, let’s say each spends an average of 150 in a year that’s what … 37 grand? Plus whatever online retail they can do.
If it’s just like one dude that runs it and works there and pays themselves I could see it being viable.
Edit: probably would be a good way to launder some drug money though and I’ve found a lot of weed smokers in the mix of my nerd shops I frequent.
4 magic players and 2 40k players should do it
Candy stores in Copenhagen that never seem to have customers, but are weirdly still around.
JP Morgan Chase, Comerica, Bank of America, etc
There’s a Mexican restaurant which I always wanted to try. Walked in and ordered a carne asada plate- the fucking thing was almost 30 bucks. It took like 20 minutes and was the consistency of reconstituted shoe leather and tasted like a jarred fart.
There is never a soul eating in there and yet it remains open.
SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER
Oof, if you’re going to run a money laundering business at least either provide a good product or a cheap price.
They don’t want to do that because the restaurant could potentially become popular and then they’d have to actually function as a restaurant.
Then you have more revenue so it’s easier to launder large cash payments through it.
Then you have to run a restaurant which are notoriously low-margin anyway. Just make fake a bunch of fake sales so the money comes out clean, needing to effectively manage a restaurant is a lot of overhead for someone who may have no interest in running a legitimate business.
That one
In eastern europe it’s like every second shop so you get quickly used to it
I keep thinking about the pizza store that was opened as a front for the mafia but did such good business that they quit doing the mafia thing and just sold pizzas full-time
There’s an Italian restaurant in Denver (Gaetano’s) that was opened in the 40s to give the mob wives something to keep them busy and to launder money. The mob is long gone, but the restaurant is still pretty popular.
It’s good stuff too!
Had an amazing Chinese restaurant near my old place, really excellent food but always completely deserted. They always seemed so surprised that when we called for takeout and whenever we collected it they’d chat about how busy they’d been, and how bus loads of tourists stop by, it just happens to be empty right now… Uhuh. Surrre. I live in this street, I don’t see busses of anyone. But the food was consistently excellent, so they must have actively not advertised because otherwise they’d been super popular.
A maybe-related but maybe-not story: I heard someone talk about walking into an out-of-the-way pizza place. Inside, there were no customers, but there was one employee and there seemed to be a few guys in suits just standing around talking to him. Everyone there was surprised to see anyone walking in, and even more surprised when he ordered a pizza. The pizza took ages to make, like over a half hour, but he did get a pizza; they handed it to him and hustled him out the door without even taking his money. I think they might’ve even locked the door behind him, I don’t remember.
The way the story goes, he took it home and ate it, and it was the absolute best pizza he’d ever had in his life. But every time he tried to go back after that, the place was closed.
I heard a very similar story, except it was one Italian grandma with a bunch of dudes in suits. She proceeded to serve him the single largest, most elaborate, and most delicious Italian dinner he had ever had. Apparently he could see into the kitchen, and she was making everything from scratch. He was there for like two hours, and she just kept bringing more plates out even though he hadn’t actually ordered anything. All because she was so excited to finally have someone to cook for. She even sat with him to chat, and was clearly happy to just have someone except the angry-looking dudes in suits to talk to. IIRC the suits didn’t even take payment before he was ushered out of the door.
He tried to go back like a week later, but the place was totally deserted.
Your story is so familiar, I wonder if maybe I misremembered that one.
Yeah, the one table i saw eating in was a group of young guys in smart suits looking very serious.
I miss the little mob money laundering pizza place that I went to as a kid. Absolutely amazing pizza. Never the same after the feds shut down the drug trafficking ring behind it all and deported the owner.
On the flip side, there’s a local pizza place where I currently live that’s fucking terrible. Some of the worst pizza I’ve ever had. It made me wonder how they could stay in business. Then I found out that name of the business happened to also be the name of the local mafia family.
Local places are always one or the other: either they’re the best thing you’ve ever eaten and you can’t wait to get back there and have it again, or they’re just the worst. I guess that applies to mafia fronts, too.
Sounds like the comic book origin story for Godfather’s Pizza.
