Michigan 6-year-old orders $1k worth of food on Grubhub when dad thought he was playing with phone

It was an all-you-can-eat buffet for a Michigan boy.

Six-year-old Mason Stonehouse was playing on his dad's phone before bedtime and spent about $1,000 on Grubhub orders. The food started coming to the Chesterfield Township family's home near Detroit on a Saturday night in February. And it kept coming.

The Stonehouse family's Ring camera footage shows delivery after delivery coming to the door. Mason's dad, Keith, was bewildered -- until he figured out what happened.

"I said, 'What is going on? Why are you bringing me food?" his perplexed dad asked a food delivery driver according to an interview with CNN affiliate WDIV-TV. It finally clicked with him that he let his son use his phone earlier that night, telling the TV station that Mason was "going to town" with the Grubhub app.

Mason ordered basically every food that ever existed, including shrimp, salads, shawarma, chicken pita wraps, sandwiches, chili cheese fries and multiple orders of ice cream. So much food was ordered that Keith's bank sent him a fraud alert declining a $400 order of pizza.

His father tried calling the restaurants to stop the orders once he figured out what had happened, but they told him to contact Grubhub. The leftover food was shared with neighbors and eaten as leftovers.

"While all of the food was being delivered and I figured out what happened, I went to talk to Mason about what he did and this is the only part that makes me laugh," Keith told MLive.com. "I was trying to explain to him that this wasn't good and he puts his hand up and stops me and says 'Dad, did the pepperoni pizzas come yet?' I had to walk out of the room. I didn't know if I should get mad or laugh."

Grubhub said the company reached out to the Stonehouse family about their son's "unexpected spending spree" and offered them $1,000 worth of Grubhub gift cards.

Mason's parents said they tried to turn the six-year old's spending spree into a money management teaching moment. They grabbed his piggy bank and started taking money out -- a coin for the pizza, a coin for the shrimp and so on.

"It sunk in when we were actually taking his money to teach him a lesson," said Kristin Stonehouse, Mason's mother, who told Mason, "We know this money in your piggy bank means something to you ... [and] it's only a fraction of what was spent."

Mason's parents said it will take some time before he gets his phone privileges back.

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Editor's note: This report was originally published in February 2023.