Let's back up here. The problem isn't the restaurant (which is a terrible, terrible, terrible idea given everything else in the letter and the world at large right now). The problem is "dude got laid off and is having a midlife crisis." The answer isn't going to be having him rationally take business courses or learn how to cook, because the problem isn't rational to begin with - he needs to see someone who can help him see that he's gone into an emotional whirlwind, lost what he thought was his bedrock, and that he's grasping at willow branches in a torrent. If he doesn't get that straightened out, he'll eventually crash and burn on some aspect of this food business and then decide that he needs to become a pastor or experimental aircraft inventor or start a legal marijuana grow operation because those will solve all his problems - problems that he's afraid to actually name and face at the moment.