We are Diamond, and no it isn't automatically free when it is a "restaurant"....only if you chose that as part of your member profile option. We chose to receive additional points instead of breakfast. Most times that is just fine, a few times I would have liked the breakfast......but oh well. Now if the hotel has a concierge/executive lounge then the continental breakfast, snacks etc are available no matter your profile choice. That is what we got at the DTD Hilton.
We stayed at DDT, DTS via Mousesavers so we could get the cold breakfast for free. The hot breakfast was an additional charge. At that time there was no executive lounge, not sure that has changed.