When you have 3 bubble tea shops within 100m in a town of 15000 where the basic wage for retail is basically $4000 (Switzerland) and a rent of $2000 + $50k without counting the cost to re-arrange the shop, with at least 2 staffs and no clients any times I walk by, I have no doubt about the purpose of these shops.

Selling takeaway sugar and caffeine with a high markup and a quiet shopfront isn't a new business model. Locating them near each other is just game theory. All of this is exactly the same as Starbucks.

Bubble tea started being sold in the West to appeal to Asian immigrants. So just because you don't use it doesn't mean nobody else does.

Women's clothing, especially boutiques, are probably not a bad choice for money laundering if you could somehow pass knockoff stuff as genuine luxury articles, and have your dirty money come in as the delta between knockoff and genuine wholesale. Pet shops? I dunno.

High end clothing boutiques aren’t cash businesses though, so they’re generally not good for money laundering.

Probably not - but there are "Sample sales" that pop up in abandoned store fronts that are certainly 100% cash, and I'm sure shady shit goes down in those. I'm too fat for any of those clothes, so I just judge from outside.

I knew a pet shop in the US in the 90’s whose primary business was moving large quantities of weed around (bagged in the bottom of barrels of fish), so yeah, not impossible.