A notification banner pops up on the screen of an iPhone. Sophomore Daniel Wu looks down and reads, “Your order was dropped off. Please refer to this photo your Dasher provided to see where it was left.” He quickly puts his phone down. 

But he’s not ordering from home. Daniel is in school with five minutes left in history class. 

Some students are using DoorDash to get food delivered to school at lunch and other times because they say it provides a better variety of food options than the cafeteria and is more convenient than walking to a restaurant. 

DoorDash partners with over 390,000 restaurants and stores globally. 

“Personally, my tummy starts rumbling in fourth period, and I start to get a little hungry during that time,” Daniel said, “and sometimes the cafeteria just isn’t enough for me.”

Although the current high school schedule gives students an additional five minutes to eat lunch compared to last year, the extra time has not been enough to improve Daniel’s DoorDash ordering experience, he said. 

Other students have different perspectives on the new timetable, such as Kathryn Bean, a sophomore who usually orders her food right before lunch.

“I think the extra five minutes does add to the time, but also the free periods on Wednesday and the free periods in other times of the day gives me other opportunities to order food,” she said. “The food is more expensive than the cafeteria, but it tastes better, and there is more variety.”

DoorDash offers a payment plan called DashPass, which eliminates delivery fees entirely regardless of distance. 

Kathryn said she doesn’t order enough from DoorDash for a DashPass subscription, costing $9.99 a month, to be useful.

Neighborhood restaurants are popular among DoorDash users because the delivery fee is reduced for closer locations. 

“Deep Purpl is a favorite of me and my friends, especially when we don’t want to walk all the way and we can just DoorDash it,” Kathryn said about the Harper Court restaurant. “Sometimes we will share the food because we do order a lot.”

Zetta Mrizek, a senior, also orders from DoorDash with her friends outside of school. 

“One person will order food for everyone and then we’ll pay them back,” she said, “and we’ll share whatever food we get.”

Zetta is also one of the co-presidents of the Jewish Students Association. At school, she mainly uses DoorDash for club events. 

“When we had our Hanukkah party, we doordashed pizza,” Zetta said. “That’s just because we can’t get large amounts of pizza in the cafeteria.” 

In addition, she described the pizza in the cafeteria as “raw” and “doughy.” 

“Last year we ordered some pizza from Papa Johns. This year we got some from Medici,” Zetta said. “I think I liked the pizzas that I ordered better than the ones in the cafeteria.”

Surrounded by the chatter of his classmates, Daniel walks down the staircase to the high school entrance. Waiting in the lobby is a DoorDash delivery driver.  After thanking the DoorDasher and picking up his order, still slightly warm, Daniel heads back inside to the second-floor lounge.

The aroma of Chipotle tacos fills the air as he opens his bag and takes a bite — delicious.