Is this a place you'd want to eat at?

[Shalom]

2. Make it a buffet. Most people understand that you can't take a doggy bag home from a buffet.

There's a kosher steakhouse in Manhattan that used to do exactly this. On Mondays they had a buffet, all you could eat for something like $24, and although they didn't advertise it, if you didn't feel like eating there, it was possible to order the buffet to go: they'd give you a tray of a specified size, and whatever you could cram in there and still get the lid on they'd let you take home for the same price. Unfortunately they don't have the buffets anymore; I used to stop there every Monday on my way home from work.

[Overnight]

I sympathize with the restaurant owner and managers, but we should get what we pay for. If I saw a "No take-out" notice on a menu or sign, I would think that it means, "We won't make you a to-go order, sorry - dine-in only" not "You can't have your leftovers even though you paid for the entire meal."

I'd be fine with the restaurant adopting a rule stating that happy-hour prices are good for only one meal, per guest, per day - and if a guest doesn't eat all of his meal, he should get his leftovers because he paid for the entire meal. That rule would be good for both the restaurant and the non-SC customers and I'd be happy to eat there if it were in play.

So maybe an SC would still order one meal at happy-hour prices, take one bite, and then get a to-go box. Well...that does defeat the purpose of "luring" customers into the restaurant with cheap food in order to get them to buy other things, but it's a risk that the managers and owners take when they put on a happy hour. Our store does the same thing with loss leaders and, ultimately, benefits from them far more than we suffer - it's why we haven't stopped doing them, after all.