By Allison Pohle | Photography by Matt Martian for WSJ
On a recent day off from making lattes and Frappuccinos, Starbucks barista Bridget Baron came into work to do something the company usually frowns upon: posting an on-the-job TikTok.
For this video, though, the 21-year-old used a company-issued tripod and wore her Starbucks logo-emblazoned apron. The video she filmed of herself swirling whipped cream onto holiday drinks racked up more than 800,000 views -- and gave Starbucks a quick, viral marketing hit.
There is a rich tradition of employees posting about work life. But it is often to spoof the grind of customer service or corporate culture, and many staffers do it without explicit approval or revealing where they work.
Now, instead of discouraging the practice, companies from Starbucks to Delta Air Lines are leaning into it -- by co-opting workers as their own social-media influencers. And they want a hand in crafting the content.
The strategy lets employers showcase their workplaces as happy ones and get some grassroots-like marketing out of their often young, digital-native staffers. For employees, it is a chance to channel their budding content-creation skills into greater visibility and access to perks, such as work trips and professional-development training.
It can also serve as a notch on their résumé.
"I have grown up on social media and I love creating content," said Baron, who studies computer science in Charlotte, N.C., and aspires to be a user-experience designer. She recently added "content creator" to her Starbucks work experience on LinkedIn. After working at Starbucks for three years, she said, "I thought this would be a great intersection of the two things."
Baron was one of 53 baristas chosen since 2024 for the company's Green Apron Creators initiative, which encourages rank-and-file employees to post on-the-job videos. Starbucks sends them occasional prompts to post on coming promotions, such as the return of Apple Crisp syrup. Creators are paid per post, though the company declined to say how much.
As with similar creator programs at Ulta Beauty and at Hugo Boss's German headquarters, these staffers typically aren't social-media stars in their own right. Baron, has fewer than 1,000 followers on TikTok.
Otherwise, Starbucks still prohibits its baristas from posting on shift, in their aprons or behind the bar, unless such posts are preapproved and coordinated with the company's brand-marketing or communications team, it said.
In recent years, one barista said he was let go after posting a customer's intricate, multistep drink order. Another was terminated after a rant she posted about her shift went viral. The company declined to comment on any specific instances but said it reviews any history of policy violations and whether the conduct violates its values before disciplining employees.
Sometimes enlisting employees as influencers feeds a specific business strategy. The restaurant chain Portillo's plans to expand nationally, so it wants to raise its brand awareness beyond its mostly Chicago-area base and hire more people, said Jill Waite, its chief people officer.
This year, Portillo's chose 15 staffers for its Maxwell Street Mavens creator program -- named for a popular menu item, the Maxwell Street Polish sausage -- based on the content they posted to LinkedIn and internal channels.
Zach Hawkins, who manages the Portillo's in Chandler, Ariz., is one of them. Hawkins, 33 years old, said he typically isn't comfortable on camera but saw the program as a good way to push himself professionally and personally.
Recently, Portillo's sent Hawkins and other employee-creators prompts to create videos tied to National Italian Beef Week and National Hot Dog Week. Sufficiently inspired, he put on a hot-dog shirt and had a colleague dress up as a hot dog. Aficionados of Chicago-style hot dogs have a strong aversion to using ketchup, so they filmed a bit showing the co-worker swatting a bottle of ketchup out of Hawkins's hand and creating a mess.
Including editing, production took about 45 minutes. They then submitted the video for approval before posting it.
"With all the influencers out there, I think it's great that we are going with the times and using our resources internally," Hawkins said. Portillo's doesn't provide extra compensation to members of its program but is exploring incentives such as company merchandise, Waite said.
Tapping employees as in-house influencers has to feel authentic, workplace analyst and corporate adviser Josh Bersin said. If the staffer sounds scripted and unbelievable, it is all for nothing.
But if the employee is charismatic, "they can end up going viral," he said.
Deltalina, the nickname for the redheaded flight attendant who began starring in the airline's onboard safety videos in 2008, rose to fame for her playful, on-screen finger-wagging. Recognized in person for years, she appeared again this year in a safety video highlighting Delta employees in uniforms from each era the airline has been in operation.
For a new project it is testing with employee-creators, Delta handpicked 15 front-line employees, including pilots, flight attendants and customer-service agents, and brought them to the company's Atlanta headquarters for orientation. There, it went over the difference between a fleeting interaction on a plane and social-media videos that live forever on the internet, said Tim Mapes, Delta's chief communications officer. Some employees had their own social-media followings.
Those staffers included Pamela Kucera, 64 years old, who began posting travel tips on TikTok and Instagram three years ago, after her daughter encouraged her. At first, Kucera said, she didn't think anyone would want to hear from an "old" flight attendant. But she gained several thousand followers by offering advice for new hires and explaining concepts such as seniority and crew scheduling.
Now an official Delta influencer, Kucera watches tutorials on how to edit videos with music, as well as create voice-overs and captions. She estimates she spends five hours a week on producing content, interviewing fellow flight attendants and talking about favorite memories with passengers.
"It gives you a really good scope of who we are at Delta," she said.
Write to Allison Pohle at allison.pohle@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 02, 2025 13:34 ET (18:34 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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