Supermarket chain Wegmans has a crisis in the form of blowback from its use of cameras to scan customers’ faces in its newish New York City stores. The company put out a statement on this that is both impressive and a little cagey.

New York City has two Wegmans, one in Brooklyn (opened 2019) and one at Astor Place in Manhattan (2023, pictured). On Jan. 3, Gothamist, an online outlet covering New York City, ran a story reporting that the locations were collecting and storing customers’ biometric data from faces, eyes and voices.

The Gothamist article cited as its source new signs in the stores announcing this. The signs say the technology is used to “protect the safety and security of our patrons and employees.”

The signs are key here. Under a 2021 New York City law, businesses that collect biometric data must disclose that fact. New York City appears to be one of the few places in the U.S. that has such a requirement. The crisis really grew because Wegmans complied with the sign law.

Media-Shy

Gothamist quoted two customers who said they would stop shopping at Wegmans because of the facial recognition. Commenters on the article concurred. On Jan. 12, CNN ran a story reporting that the signs “generated enough attention from media and customers to cause the notoriously media-shy Wegmans to issue a rare public statement.” The undated message was issued Jan. 7, according to CNN.

In it, the Rochester, New York-based company admitted to using “cameras to help identify individuals who pose a risk to our people, customers or operation. In a small fraction of our stores located in communities that exhibit an elevated risk, we have deployed cameras equipped with facial-recognition technology.”

Wegmans insisted the “technology is solely used for keeping our stores secure and safe” and the data is collected only “to identify individuals who have been previously flagged for misconduct.” It holds onto the data “only as long as necessary for security purposes,” it said. The company denied collecting data from “retinal scans or voice prints.”

Third Party

Wegmans said it doesn’t share the data with any third party other than law enforcement — when needed. It referred to identifying “persons of interest” and to “criminal or missing-persons cases.”

On the one hand, the statement was good in trying to reassure customers (“We understand concerns about fairness and bias in facial-recognition systems”). Wegmans appeared to be transparent about what it’s doing, even going into some detail.

But the statement also seemed cagey in that it never used the word shoplifting. Isn’t that what this is about? Isn’t that the main reason for the cameras? To catch shoplifters? The first sentence of the CNN story is “The biggest chains in America are using facial-recognition technology to try to stop shoplifting.”

Shoplifting Euphemisms

Why not just say that? Why not admit that shoplifting is a major problem? Instead, the statement used terms like “secure and safe” and “misconduct” as (sort of) euphemisms. It referred to “persons of interest,” which you would think is about shoplifting, but it also invoked “missing persons,” which is mysterious and intriguing (we’re not saying the cameras are only about shoplifting).

We had such mixed feelings about that statement. It seemed to want to be transparent, which is what crisis communications should be. But it was also withholding, which crisis communications shouldn’t be.

Photo Credit: PRCG | Haggerty LLC

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