I’m not terribly concerned about the ethics or health effects of what i’m about to suggest. What I’m attempting to do with this post is share my experiences so that the reader might have some additional tools to add to their belt for survival while hungry. We all gotta eat and fortunately in a capitalist society there’s a lot of excess up for the taking if you’re willing to abandon your shame for a minute.

Breakfast

Every town you’re in has at least one hotel with continental breakfast. Every hotel has several faces walking in and out through the day. The hotel staff have basically zero idea who’s a guest or not so you can literally just walk in and make a plate.

These complementary breakfasts are generally between 7am and 9am. You will not get caught unless you look like you walked in from the street and even then the cost of the food does not outweigh the annoyance of asking someone to leave. It’s worth grabbing an extra apple for the road as you head out, gotta stay full!

Lunch

I’m always shocked at the amount of food people aren’t planning on white boxing and taking home. Hundreds of meals in restaurants end up in the trash when the customer leaves. Alternatively hundreds of meals could end up in your mouth! If you take a stroll downtown during the lunch rush you’re almost guaranteed to find a left over plate out on the patio seating. If you can grab it before the server cleans it you’re in the clear. It’s gonna be thrown out anyway so really you’re doing the community a service.

Dinner

Back to the hotels for dinner. There’s this scene in The Simpsons where a drunk Homer stumbles around in a hotel hall way picking food off room service plates. Fucking inspirational in my opinion. Similar to the lunch rush the dinner service platters in a hotel are filled with leftovers. As we learned while appropriating breakfast hotels have little incentive to double check that you’re supposed to be there. Hotels also rarely have cameras in the hallways. Walk in around 10 or so after everyone has finished their dinner you’ll likely find a plate of fries or two.

Good luck punks.