when me and my friends worked at McDonalds we would give bags of food to our friends at the end of the night through the drive thru.
they were just going to be thrown out anyway
my friends and I would go into McDonalds five minutes before closing after they had cleaned the grill and fryers and order big macs minus the mayo and salt free fries. We always got a free meal or a deeply discounted meal.
Daughter worked at one of our local sort-of fast food places back in the late 1970’s which sold the most awesome made from scratch brownies and homemade oatmeal raisin cookies in the world. Owner would always bake up a couple of batches of each about an hour or two before closing time. Any left over baked goods were always thrown away so the employees would take them all home. Our freezer always had an ample supply of brownies and cookies. Still miss them.