I go to the local Starbucks all the time. While my wife and I are not on a first name basis with any of the employees (yet) some of them do know us and we kind of know them. The biggest fault of this particular store is that it is only open until 9:00pm which is crazy, but I live in a town that practically goes dead by 8:00.
That being said, I’ve never had issues taking photos inside of the store. The images of my church’s pastoral staff were taken inside this Starbucks. I’ve used my camera phone and also my Nikon DSLR to shoot pictures in there.
Recently, I was in Ormond Beach testing out the AlienBees CyberSync triggers I had purchased and afterward, we stopped by a Starbucks in Ormond to grab some coffee. While I was on line ordering, my wife took my camera and started taking some photos. I didn’t notice, but apparently, one of the employees came out from behind the counter and went over to my wife and told her she was not allowed to take pictures in the store and offered no reason why.
I imagine she couldn’t offer a reason because she probably could not articulate it as Starbucks corporate cannot even say what their own policy is.
The story above revolves around Starbucks setting up an official Flickr group but then having issues dealing with photographers who were getting hassled at stores for taking photographs. The group’s last message from the administrator says:
This group has helped inform us of the inconsistent experiences photographers have in our stores. We have put group discussion on hold until we have more updates on an official policy for photography in our stores. We appreciate your patience and encourage you to check back in the following months for an update.
Months? Why should something like this take months? That message was posted in January so it has been nearly 6 months at this point.
It’s absurd, especially for a company that people cheer as one that “gets” social media. Well, they’re not getting this part of it. Granted, Starbucks is well within their rights to restrict people from taking photographs in their stores, but why would they? Taking pictures is part of the overall social media landscape. It’s almost impossible to purchase a phone these days that doesn’t have a built in camera. People post images to their Twitter and Facebook accounts all the time. Why wouldn’t Starbucks want to take advantage of that?
What do you think?
