Banning Grubhub

Instead of packing lunches, many high school students now pack their cellphones, ordering food delivered to their school with apps like Grubhub, DoorDash and Uber Eats.

The deliveries have become so frequent and disruptive that many schools have banned them.

"It was getting to the point where you'd have eight, 10, 15 deliveries a day," said Pat Watson, principal at West Bloomfield High School, which recently reminded students to knock it off. "It's a building policy: You can't have food delivered during the school day."

Other schools have done the same thing. Some schools have policies explicitly prohibiting it. Others frown on it, but don't formally ban it. All of them say the practice has exploded with cellphone use and the proliferation of delivery services.

The Plymouth-Canton School District, which operates three high schools in one location, doesn't have a formal policy about food deliveries, but the building procedures don't allow it, said spokesman Nick Brandon.

The main reason for the ban is school safety, he said, but there are other reasons as well.

"The second that food enters the school office, it becomes the school office's responsibility," Brandon said, adding it created concerns of food safety, food-borne illnesses and allergic reactions.

"It's also a workload issue for office personnel," he said. "If they're having to manage multiple food orders at a given lunch time with all the other things they have to be responsible for, that's a concern as well."