IMHO, I think Mr. King is overstepping his bounds since that money is considered personal money.
When I worked for a DoD company, we got a per-diem. Hotel was separate expense. So what we usually did was stay at a hotel with a free breakfast and then eat cheaply or even better, do a very late, late lunch. At the end of the trip, it was some nice extra money to pocket and was tax free.
On one trip, we had some executive types with us and they tried to force us to do a common check for the meals and indirectly expected us non-exec types to foot the bill for their fancy meal. They weren’t happy when a few of us folks pushed back.
I worked for a different company in the early 1990’s in Indianapolis and for quite a few months, I had to to frequent trips to and from Chicago and I drove a beat up truck and took it on the trips. The executive VP of finance caught wind what a few of us were spending our mileage checks on and she pretty well required us to fly afterward. Even a trip to Cincinnati, we had to fly. IN that company we were not given a per-diem. One guy used the money to fix up his vehicle.
So what we usually did was stay at a hotel with a free breakfast
If you get a breakfast at a hotel on travel than you are supposed to tell your Travel person so they can deduct breakfast from your per diem. I am a travel person and always call the hotel to see if they offer breakfast. If they do then I deduct breakfast from the per diem amount. Now that you know PLEASE either pick a hotel WITHOUT breakfast or tell your travel person to deduct the money for breakfast or you are committing fraud and FREEPERS don’t do that.