A number of schools in Michigan, Deleware, and Ohio have banned food deliveries during the school day from companies like Grubhub, Doordash, and Uber Eats.
“It was getting to the point where you’d have eight, 10, 15 deliveries a day,” Pat Watson, principal at West Bloomfield High School in Michigan, told the Detroit Free Press. “It’s a building policy: You can’t have food delivered during the school day.”
Diane Blain, spokeswoman for Chippewa Valley Schools in Macomb County, said that the district’s two high schools banned the practice.
“We view it as a safety concern,” she said. “Having strangers and people that we don’t know coming to our buildings with delivery bags, we just don’t allow it.”
Students: just a reminder that food deliveries are not allowed during school hours. pic.twitter.com/vvOoFP0P5O
— Mr. Watson (@wbhslakernation) March 26, 2019
While some schools have formal bans, others are discouraging the deliveries. Nearly all face an explosion in interest in food deliveries, coming from ubiquitous cellphones and the fast-growing popularity of food delivery apps.
Even elementary school students get pizza delivered for lunch, Jeff Hueter, assistant manager of Jet’s Pizza, told the Free Press.
“The parents will call and say my kid’s lunch is at noon, can you deliver a pizza to the office and maybe throw in a bottle of water?” Hueter said.
Parents will pay using the Jet app or with a credit card. Teachers have been known to order a pie for lunch as well.
Two schools in Wilmington, Delaware, recently announced bans on food deliveries, also citing safety concerns.
Red Clay Consolidated School District spokeswoman Pati Nash told the News Journal that meal deliveries were increasing, causing safety problems, adding that allowing “random people to bring Thai food is not part of the safety plan.”
Dale Franklin, superintendent of the district, said that delivery cars would converge in front of the school around lunch time.
Local schools ban use of food delivery apps over safety concerns https://t.co/B8FBdYWCPx
— FOX 29 (@FOX29philly) April 9, 2019
“I just think it creates more of a safety risk,” he told Fox 29.
A similar ban was being enforced in Ohio over food deliveries.
Copley Fairlawn Schools Superintendent Brian Poe said that the phenomenon of deliveries is new enough that there isn’t an official board policy, but that the deliveries violate an existing district policy that states unauthorized visitors are not allowed on school grounds.
No food delivery services allowed in local school district https://t.co/aSkksIhJcH via @fox8news
— fox8news (@fox8news) March 12, 2019
“Our concern is allowing unauthorized folks on property who are going to deliver a bag or a box. We take safety and security very seriously in our district, so we want to make sure that our students are safe at all times,” Poe told Fox 8.
Some students weren’t pleased with the bans.
“That’s ludicrous, honestly, in my opinion, because they’re not coming on to do anything threatening, except deliver food,” Rocky Nguyen, a student, told Fox 8.
Nguyen said that delivery “saves a lot of time and I prefer to pay for delivery than pay for gas, honestly.”
