Not all that far from where I live is the coffee-shop-that-isn't-a-coffee-shop. It's called Johnie's and up until around 2000, it was just your average place to go and get a sandwich, a piece of pie and a cuppa joe. Once upon a time before that, it did a lot of business but that was long ago and far away. That area once housed some of the city's largest department stores and I would guess that their demise, as the trend in retailing moved towards malls in other locales, was why commerce at Johnie's declined.
At the turn of the century, the place was sold to the company that operates the 99-Cent Store chain. They acquired it, I guess, because it was a prime hunk of real estate even if it wasn't a profitable place to have a coffee shop. The chain owns a lot of land in that area. There are actually two 99-Cent Stores within a two block area and I keep waiting for them to have a price war. I'm imagining one becoming a 98-Cent Store and then the other one parries by becoming a 97-Cent Store and so on…
Since the new owners took over, Johnie's is no longer a coffee shop. It's a filming location. The article I'm about to link to probably underestimates how often it's used for that. I drive by it maybe four times a week and I'd say that at least one out of every four times, I see trucks and trailers and cameras filling its parking lot. Someone is shooting a movie or a TV show or perhaps a commercial there. It obviously makes a lot more money in that capacity than if it was still selling patty melts. (Not far from it there used to be a gas station that operated in the same way. It had stopped being a place to fill one's tank and instead was a location for movies and TV programs that needed to shoot a scene at a gas station. Its pumps had been painted to reflect an imaginary brand name.)
Here is the article I just mentioned. As it explains, a movie museum is going in across the street and some are wondering and maybe worried about what it means for Johnie's. I'm guessing it won't change anything but you never know. It could increase business in that area enough that Johnie's will go back to serving meals. That would be a shame because it's a great location to film but it always had really lousy food.