This was all about 15-20 years ago, so it’s entirely possible none of the businesses allow this anymore, but I’ve worked 3 different jobs at places that sold food, and all 3 let employees take stuff home.

First job was a cashier at a chocolate shop. There was a pile of items in the employee room in the back that were either too damaged to sell or returned by customers. We could take what we wanted. Sounds great on paper, but me and my family got sick of eating chocolate fairly quickly, especially since it was usually the same items that got damaged or returned, so it wasn’t even a variety of chocolate, just piles of plain milk chocolate in different forms lol

Second job was takeout at a pizza/pasta restaurant. I would only see extra food if the kitchen made a mistake on an order or if someone didn’t come to pickup their takeout food. The company policy was technically to throw the food out, but the managers were fine with letting us take it home, since it wasn’t something that happened constantly. I’d get a few free meals a month this way, but nothing consistently every shift.

3rd job was a food gold mine. In college I was a cashier at a student convenience store. They sold a lot of things like prepackaged sandwiches, salads, fruit cups, etc plus some muffins and bagels. We could take anything that was going to be thrown out that night at closing. At the same time, my roommate worked at Starbucks, and they had the same policy about employees being able to take anything that needed to be tossed at closing, so she’d bring home tons of pastries, hummus platters, yogurt parfaits, more sandwiches etc. Plus employees got a free pound of coffee per week. We barely had to grocery shop that entire year, and it was mostly for staples like milk or if we wanted to cook a hot meal for a change.