Somehow I don't think venue vendors need to charge $3.00 for a hot dog to make a profit on said hot dog. If you do, then you RUN A VERY BAD BUSINESS.
I'd hope these venues would stop being so greedy, recognize the relatively empty wallets of the majority of the youthful participants at a FIRST event, and lower prices at their food stands accordingly. Either that, or be creative in finding ways to bring cheaper meals to participants (catered prepaid lunches at GTR). Ya ya it's their venue and their contract, but WHO CARES? If you want your monopoly, fine, but don't penalize the thousands of kids visiting your arena who don't have that kind of money to spend on food every day. Basically, stop being such capitalist pigs, get into the spirit of FIRST, and lower your prices to REALISTIC levels. Maybe then, you wouldn't have so many teams trying to do an end around all your greed. If you're so dang worried about losing money on a few high school students, then go right ahead and jack up the costs for the people going to the next monster truck rally or Mariah Carey concert.
OR.....regionals can do it like Boilermaker, tell the big venues to take a hike, and have a multitude of vendors bid on food service contracts so the REGIONAL calls all the shots, not the corporations controlling the arena venues. Let's have more regionals on college and university campuses and get those colleges and universities directly involved - bring the future engineers of America directly to the institutions that will mold and shape them into productive members of society. But we've got to have FIRST on TV some day (right?), so does having events in "big league sports" arenas somehow validate our program and prove it is "worthy" of being televised? Are we kissing up to big media, too? Are journalists and reporters above driving to a boring old college campus to cover our "non-mainstream" activities? I digress....
All that being said, instead of circumventing the rules, let's live within them. Take the high road, and your character cannot be questioned. You could take the extreme route by boycotting the venues' steep prices and waiting to eat later. I venture to guess that most people would "survive" until then. You may be really freakin hungry, but you'll deal. Drink a lot of water. Or have someone order food for the team elsewhere and go across the street to eat it (or eat it outside the venue on venue property if they permit such "dastardly" deeds). Or buy the absolute cheapest thing on the menu to get you by until later on. Don't give these people the pleasure of making excessive profits at the expense of those who shouldn't be paying that much to eat a basic (and usually poor quality) meal.
Kevin mentioned that venues sometimes offer discounted rates to the regional committees to have access to the arenas for the competition weekend. I wonder if the venues think that charging high prices for food is one way to attempt to recover the revenues lost from being so "magnanimous". Some discount, huh?
If so, are we shifting the cost burden away from the regional committees and onto the shoulders of a group of people mainly comprised of high school students? Is that a good thing? I suppose if it was the difference between having a regional and not having one, it's worth it, but it's still disappointing that there aren't additional corporate and private sponsors out there willing to donate resources to an event to make it more affordable for all.