Small business owners should be able to plan ahead for rainy days and the slow season. Squirrels can do it. Humans can too.
Sandy in NYC flooded a great deal of infrastructure and left buildings without power or communications for a long time. Large parts of downtown were completely depopulated for weeks on end - that sort of event takes out independent business owners, and you can't effectively plan for it.
For the most part food vending isn't so profitable that you can build up a thick cushion for longer-term outages.
I don't see how being a small business operator of something like this is different. The source of income is different, the wisdom is the same.
Hopefully they were able to set aside months worth of floating money, and even weeks due to a natural disaster wouldn't wreck them.
It's not hackers, it's adults. This is called an "emergency fund". 3 to 6 months cash that's easy to access in the event of a genuine emergency, including loss of work. Personal Finance 101.
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.
(For short term issues there is insurance, whether in the form of savings or actual insurance.)
Such coverage pays some percentage of your salary for many years from the beginning of a long-term disability. I think that both of those numbers vary widely from plan to plan.
I just point out that many people are programmed to be risk-averse. A shitty job with a steady paycheck is perceived as lower risk than a potentially more lucrative job with a big company.
When I was in college, I sold extended warranties with computers. People would buy a PC for $2,000, and 80% of them would buy an extended warranty for $400. They felt like they were winning, because their liability was now limited.
