I co-own a restaurant as a side job. Saving 3-6 months or more worth of emergency funds for my personal use is the trivial part. The real problem is covering everything that the insurance policies won't cover to a sufficient extent: everything from building damage (maybe the landlord takes forever to rebuild/repair) to replacing equipment and any fees to go through processes and get all kinds of permits all over again. That's if there aren't external factors in play that causes problems (like maybe everyone else in the neighborhood got fucked by a major earthquake too).
This is totally different from my freelancing mindset since I have to start thinking about tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars just for floating a brick and mortar business for even a couple months, whereas my biggest investment for my main line of work is...mostly a nice computer. All this after insurance, so then it's time to start thinking about FEMA and bank loans (as if the stingy as fuck banks will give out loans).
All of this is on top of other hassles (SF, Alameda and LA counties are ....nuts for restaurant owners, to say the least) and it just sucks to think about. Maybe food trucks get more leeway or whatever in a lot of areas due to flexibility and size, but if I'm having these thoughts about a pretty profitable decent volume restaurant I shudder to think about the smaller fish out there.
