Why Food Delivery Apps Are Causing Chaos at Schools

Remember when eating lunch at school meant soggy homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or dry meats covered in starchy sauces at the cafeteria?

Well, apparently that's a thing of the past. No more trading bologna sandwiches for the Italian kid's leftover ragu—teens are trading in canned tuna for sushi and bologna sandwiches for Panera.

Thanks to food delivery apps like Uber Eats, GrubHub, and Postmates, and, of course, mommy and daddy's credit card numbers, high schools are having to deal with a huge influx of food delivery drivers bringing tailor-made lunches to their students.

Not surprisingly, this trend appears to be even more pronounced in schools in and around Palo Alto, situated squarely in Silicon Valley. According to the Sacramento Bee, Granite Bay High School had to ban DoorDash food delivery because it led to dozens of meals showing up at different times and school officials having to track down students.

While other schools across America deal with widespread sexting and illegal photos being disseminated, Granite Bay High School is putting its foot down on the food delivery app. "We can't manage it, and we shouldn't manage it," Principal Jennifer Leighton told Sacramento Bee. "It's not our job to find a kid and make sure he knows his lunch is here."

DoorDash, which makes money off of delivery fees as high at $6.99 per order, goes out of their way to make sure that the service is personalized and that clients can pick up the food themselves, with no need for an intermediary like a pesky school receptionist. "As long as it's in our delivery radius and there's an address, the dasher is more than happy to bring your favorite food," DoorDash said in a statement.

But Granite Bay High clearly isn't having it and students will now have to return to the misery of food prepared by their parents and cafeteria workers, or resort to the plebeian barter system.