Chance to buy a restaurant franchise(Zero Degree). Yay or Nay.

[Anon-E-Mouze]

From a relationship perspective (which seems important) and business perspective, why don't you look into paying the friend for an option to purchase the restaurant, with part of the deal being that your wife will work (for pay) as a trainee manager for 3 or 6 months?

Pros: (1) Paying for an option enables you to lock in a good price. (2) The option shows your wife that you're taking her dream seriously. (3) There's a trial period where she can test the experience of running the business, you can look more closely at the operations and $, and your friend gets some relief from the burden of running the business.

Cons: (1) You are spending money (for the option) on something that might not come to fruition. (Although maybe you can reach an agreement about the assignability of the option.) (2) Your friend might want to get out now and might be able to find a buyer for the place.

[partgypsy]

As far as the nay relating to sit down restaurants having less demand going forward, seems like with this franchise less of a problem since it seems more drinks (ala starbucks) than sit-down restaurant. For example there is a boba tea place that still is open in my town. Not as busy but still doing business. However it is in a walkable area with some outside seating, so that teens, etc can walk there and hang out outside. So it depends if this franchise is in a friendly, walkable area, and can add outside seating, will make it more viable.

[Villanelle]

so nearly every adult is going to need to have this in order for us to get to the 60-80% numbers I've seen cited as necessary for herd immunity. 

Every adult won't get vaccinated.   We'll be lucky to hit 80%.  Clinical trials are being done on children, and I suspect there will be a vaccine rollout for them as well.    Under 16 makes up ~ 20% of the population ( believe the vaccines are currently authorized for 16+).   Assuming 25% of the country has been infected, and then add another 10%+ by summer will be infected, we're actually not too far off.  Israel will be the fastest case study to give us an idea, and the data is coming in fast.

People who have been infected are still being vaccinated, so they don't really improve the numbers by much.  I don't want to drift too far from the OP's question, but the fact that not everyone will be vaccinated only extends time to herd immunity, which was sort of my point in relation to the question of when restaurants might return to somewhat normal operations and numbers. 

[WanderLucky]

As someone who has employees who deal with the general public, I would stay far away from just about any business where you work in person with the general public right now, or go into it eyes wide open with a covid contingency plan:
What do you do when an employee shows up for work exhibiting covid symptoms? What do you do when the first employee receives a positive covid test result? How do you ensure you have enough healthy people to work while employees are waiting on test results? Are you offering health insurance or even to pay for testing? How do you track who has had contact with who when they hang out together outside of work? Can you afford to pay them to stay home while they wait for either test results or even 3 days after potential exposure to make sure they're not unknowingly spreading it around? Can you afford to close down to deep clean the restaurant and until you have enough employees with negative tests top safely re-open?
This might seem over the top, but these are all issues that we've had to deal with. I believe as a small business owner you owe it to your employees and your customers to ensure a safe place for them to be. And it can be expensive.