Winter (Starbucks)

Winter was born in Chicago, Illinois, with his family later moving to Houston, Texas.[5] He attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he graduated with a double major in philosophy and computer science.[6] Winter currently works as a freelance programmer.[7]

Winter also is a competitive Scrabble player with over 7,000 tournament games under his belt.[8]

In 1997 Winter began visiting various Starbucks locations, expressing the intent to visit every Starbucks location in the world.[5] To minimize the amount of Starbucks locations, he eliminated any licensed stores to focus solely on those owned by the company.[9] For each location to "count" he would drink "at least one four-ounce sample of caffeinated coffee from each store."[4] He would also take a picture and post it on his website.[10]

Winter has estimated that he has spent over $100,000 on the project,[11] drinking an average 10 cups of coffee a day and once spending $1400 on a plane ticket to purchase a cup of coffee from a Starbucks in British Columbia before it closed.[12] As of September 2019, Winter reported having visited over 15,000 global locations, including almost 12,000 in the United States.[13]

In 2006 Winter was the focus of the documentary Starbucking.[14][15] Starbucking was directed by Bill Tangeman and premiered at the 2006 Omaha Film Festival,[16] with the DVD released in April 2007.[17] Tangeman filmed about 40 hours of footage over a one-year period of Winter traveling to various Starbucks locations and interacting with people,[18] including a woman with whom he had been romantic.[19] Critical reception for the film was mostly positive,[20] with DVD Talk writing that although the film "doesn't offer much repeat viewing value", it was "highly watchable".[21]

• Official website
• Starbucking movie
• Winter at IMDb
• Starbucking at Rotten Tomatoes