I want to start out with saying that I did skip one whole page of this thread. Now, with that out of the way, I would like to voice my opinion/stories. Heh...
I openly disobey this rule and it's the only rule that I openly disobey. I cannot stand how much the food costs at regionals (and movie theatres). Our team gets lunch delivered to our bus at competitions. At Midwest it was Dominick's and at West Michigan this year we hired a church to cook our food and we paid them well. That was the best idea I had ever heard when someone brought it up at a planning meeting. Why not give our money to groups somewhat like us? First we started with a sorority at GVSU but they weren't interested, so we contacted a church from Allendale and they were gung-ho about it. Turns out one of the church members was a family member of one of 107's team members. Good. Anyways, we've only gotten into trouble once with having food in the parking lot of an event and that was in StL in 2003 or 2004. We just had to move our bus or food off of the arena property which was only about 3 feet away anyways. Just past the little itty-bitty string fence. But sometimes we have to take food into the arena to the students and mentors that don't have a chance to get out to the bus. We've even brought food into volunteers that were working from our team...
Now, I know rules should be followed all of the time but sometimes there's just no way to do it. We used to give out $10 to each student every day. That got rather expensive rather fast. Especially with 25-30 students. You're talking close to $1,000 for food. Why pay the arena bookubucks when we can get it catered to our bus with a tax-exempt discount and a multiple day discount from Dominicks and such? Now I'm not saying that every person should do this, but it's a good way to cut down on expenses.
I support paying a local charity to cook for you.