On the Matter of Hill Country, Leftovers, & All You Can Eat

The following email was submitted to the Eater Complaints Dept., but perhaps it's more fitting as a topic to debate. At an all you can eat dinner scenario where the restaurant is sending out food—as opposed to a buffet—should the diners be able to take home leftovers that will otherwise be thrown away? The thoughts from the Eater Community are requested on this one:

I went to Hill Country on Monday night with a large group for their 'all you can eat BBQ special', to celebrate a coworker's birthday. It said on the menu "no doggie bags", which of course, we can all understand because that's how it works at virtually every other all you can eat establishment. However, they did things differently than they normally do at Hill Country for my group—instead of us all going up to get our own food like usual, a waitress brought us trays and trays of brisket, ribs, sides, cornbread, etc. Somehow they got the word that we supposedly wanted more, so they brought out even more trays.

At that point our group was so stuffed that there was no way we could eat it, and we ended up with almost 2 full trays of meat, plus at least 12 containers of sides. I told the waitress that while I knew the policy about doggie bags, I wondered if it would be possible to take some of this enormous quantity of leftovers with us so it wouldn't go to waste. She told me no, and when I asked what they would do with it, she gave me a condescending smirk, shrugged her shoulders and said "it goes in the trash." I cannot believe how incredibly wasteful this is! Since it had already been served to a table, it's not like they could even give it to City Harvest or a shelter, and they ended up throwing out what could have been a generous dinner for at least 6 people. Not that I don't understand their policy, but why keep bringing enormous quantities of food if there's no way we could possibly eat it?