Ridiculous idea to downvote. I almost never finish restaurant meals, I’ll take the second half for lunch the next day or give it to someone on the walk home.
But suggesting portion control would be advocating more personal responsibility, so maybe that explains peoples’ “disagreement.” So much easier to toss in the trash, right?
If it weren’t expected, restaurants wouldn’t keep stacks of to-go boxes lying around. As for a sign of being poor, who gives a shit? I’m obviously wealthy enough to eat at your restaurant. And if you’d like me to share some of that wealth again, you’ll box thus shit up without comment.
But enough anonymous internet tough guy talk, I’ve been taking home food for decades and no one has ever uttered a word. Olive Garden to $200/person, it’ll get boxed with a smile. Hell, waitstaff often come around and ask if you want a box (which I sometimes take to mean, “I’d like to turn this table, Slowpoke.” <g>).
Asking to pack the leftovers is a complement! It says, this was so delicious, I want to have it again. I've had chefs at small restaurants thank me with huge smiles when I asked for a box.
I do feel bad when I can't (or won't) finish, and don't ask for a box. Aiming to eat only half the meal, so you have a good amount to bring home can sometimes help avoid overconsumption, too.
It's interesting that nobody wondered people are just concerned that food would get more expensive.
Restaurants set their prices by complex rules, and if people just started some movement to reduce portion sizes on the "if you want more, you can always ask for 2" argument, with no extra change, it's almost a certainty that prices would raise.
I believe part of that is that usually the bulk of the cost of food is the labor and not the ingredients unless you have something 'extra fancy' with ingridents. If it takes as much work to make a cup of pasta as it does to make a quart or gallon of pasta.
An extra serving would add more labor as the expensive part and not save anything. The way to avoid that would be to keep a fresh surplus in the kitchen which would get wasted anyway.
Essentially it would unfortunately amount to 'efficiency theater' without very large assumption changes - sodas for instance have free refills because it is already a massive profit margin due to the sticky price-point where everyone expects it to be a dollar something while the actual cost is measured in pennies. You would die of water intoxication before they would realize a loss from refills.
But suggesting portion control would be advocating more personal responsibility, so maybe that explains peoples’ “disagreement.” So much easier to toss in the trash, right?