*Intro music*

In the spring of 1997, one UT alumnus with one name embarked on an impossible journey. His goal was to visit every single Starbucks store in the world. To date, he has been to over 20,300 stores and 72 countries. This is his story.

Ryan Borrego: Well, normally when I, when I start interviews, I ask people for the spelling of their first and last name, but you only have one name. 

Winter: That is correct. 

Borrego: Could you tell me, could you tell me a bit about the origins of that and, uh, describe, like, the legal process? 

Winter: Back when I was around, somewhere between 18 and 21, I applied for a loan from Bank One, I think it was a credit card debt consolidation loan, and was denied and I was told that there were some red flags on my credit report, which turned out to be confusion between my accounts and my father’s accounts, who had the same name and lived at the same address. So I could have tacked on Junior to the name to disambiguate. But as you can infer from the fact that I’m doing ‘Starbucking’ and one of my primary hobbies is Scrabble, I, uh, tend to do things in a different way, so my solution was just go ahead and change my name altogether. I chose a poor name that I regretted two years later, so I had it changed again to John Winter Smith, with the logic being it’s just Winter and the John Smith is there for the computers. But then I started being written up about my Starbucking project. And some of the publications insisted on using the full name, and I didn’t want that because I didn’t want to get all these emails from people referring to me as John. I never considered John my name. It’s never been my name. So back to court for a third time to change it to Winter.

Borrego: So, uh, let’s get into Starbucking. 

Winter: Yeah, let’s do it. 

Borrego: Yeah, define what is Starbucking and what are your rules for Starbucking? 

Winter: I, I do insist that Starbucking is not simply going to Starbucks, okay? You know, if you stop at your local Starbucks and get your frappuccino on the way to work, that is not Starbucking, no. To me, Starbucking is a project, ideally with well-defined rules, that involves trying to visit some number or some subset of Starbucks, part of their, operated by their primary or exclusive licensee. The third, not really a rule, but I do it anyway, is take a picture of each store to prove I was there, you know, and then there’s other, not rules, but just processes. I make notes of anything that’s different or unusual about the coffee, about the Starbucks. Try to, uh, take the best picture possible. I try to take daylight pictures, take pictures from different angles, uh, you know, just documenting my project as much as possible. So, for example, if you wanted to just try and visit all six roasteries, now down to five because they closed the Seattle one, that would be Starbucking. Uh, the, uh, couple that emailed me saying they were gonna try to have a shot of espresso from every Starbucks in Fresno, probably 20 years ago, that’s Starbucking.

Borrego: When did it all start for you? Uh, like when was your first uh Starbucks store visit? 

Winter: Well, my first Starbucks store visit wasn’t Starbucking. That was me and a friend in Houston in 1995, March 16th, looking for a place to play chess. Driving down Westheimer, spotting this building with a sign that said Starbucks Coffee. Figured a coffee shop is a good place to play a game of chess. Uh, and, uh, we popped in, played a few games of chess. Didn’t really think about it again, might’ve gone back, uh, a few times and like, I think we went back a few times and played play, continued to play chess there, but I didn’t really think about it, uh, until I uh finally graduated university, moved out to Plano, Texas, started working. I had already gotten into a coffee, I was into a coffee habit by that point. And I could get Starbucks coffee either at the Barnes & Noble near my apartment, serving Starbucks coffee, or at a proper Starbucks, uh, on the way into work. So, uh, that’s how I became hooked on drinking Starbucks coffee on a daily basis. Then when that Barnes & Noble cafe near my apartment turned into a proper Starbucks, I got used to hanging out there. It became my third place, which is of course one of the key concepts behind the success of Starbucks: trying to establish this third place that is not work, not home, where people can hang out and spend time. I would hang out there every night, pretty much, reading, uh, later on doing work on my laptop, but also making friends. And I developed a group of probably at least half a dozen to a dozen friends, any number of which would show up on any given night. And we’d have this big group hanging outside of the power on the patio and just chatting, uh, playing cards, playing Scrabble, uh, just, just having fun until the Starbucks closed. And then we’d take it over to Denny’s or IHOP. And, uh, it was just a community, one of many communities that exist all over the country, all over the world, uh, based around hanging out at Starbucks.

So that’s what turned me into a huge Starbucks fanatic. And, uh, because of my collector’s instinct, which is my natural impulse to collect things, uh, primarily comic books in my life, uh, but also other things like coins, cards, books, magazines, I began collecting like these visits to Starbucks that I would see around the Dallas area. It wasn’t a formal organized project until sometime between, uh, in May or June of 1997, I decided to ask some baristas how many Starbucks there were. They said about 1,400 and a light bulb went off in my head and I said, I wonder if it would be possible to visit all of them. So I started hunting for the Starbucks in the Dallas area that I hadn’t been to by asking the baristas to like look on their lists and tell me of any that I had missed. And, uh, then when I went down to Houston, you know, to hang out with my parents at the house, I would start hunting down Starbucks in the Houston area. Uh, took a trip to San Antonio, uh, at some point in Austin, and then the following year took a road trip out to the West Coast, uh, Phoenix, Las Vegas, uh greater Los Angeles, Southern California. And that’s when I really fell in love with Starbucking because that trip involved, uh, a bunch of different things. You know, my first real road trip, uh, my first time really hanging out in different cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas, my first time gambling, uh, flying up to Alaska to see the midnight sun, uh, seeing concerts in LA, and all of a sudden I discovered that there was this bigger world out there than me just hanging out in Plano, Texas, hanging out with the crew at Starbucks, uh, going out to the bars and clubs, you know, a few nights a week. Uh, I could do so much more. And, uh, that’s when Starbucking really started to take off. 

Borrego: Um, what do you do for work? Um, you know, how are you funding the Starbucking journey? 

Winter: Well, I’ve been a computer programmer basically since I was in high school. I was tapped by Exxon in large part because I was fortunate enough to go to one of Houston’s magnet schools. So Exxon recruited there and I interned with them for the entire six years, or for my last year of high school and five years at college. And that pretty much kickstarted my career as a computer programmer that I’ve been able to maintain for, uh, 1989 to now, twenty, thirty-seven years, and the last twenty-nine of those years have been as a, uh, contractor, since 1997. And that not only funds my Starbucking, but it has given me the freedom to travel that is really required to get to the level that I have, uh, which is 20,300 Starbucks. There’s no way I would’ve been able to accomplish that with a standard job with your two, four, even six weeks of vacation a year. Not possible. 

Borrego: How was your time here and were you, uh, involved in any, like, campus organizations? 

Winter: Not campus organizations. I was involved in, uh, residence hall organizations. So I stayed in the residence halls for my entire five years there. I was in no hurry to leave the dorms and find an apartment. I figured once I graduate school, I’m going to get plenty of that possibly for the rest of my life. You know, we’d just find people in the lobby and say, Hey, let’s go to the movies. Hey, let’s go to Katz’s, let’s go to Kerbey Lane. Let’s just drive around and look for cows, whatever. So I was, uh, from basically my second year, I was involved in the, uh, residence hall government. So it was like vice president or treasurer doing the newsletter, that type of thing, organizing the intramural sports. So that was, that was pretty much my primary area of organization. 

Borrego: So at the time, um, you said there were only, uh 1,400 Starbucks stores…

Winter: …Yeah, something like that. 14 to 1,500 in let’s say May of 1997. There’s a timeline on the Starbucks website where you can get the, whatever their accurate number is.

Borrego: Yeah. So, how did you feel about that? Because, you know, [1,400] is definitely much more doable than, you know, 35,000 or whatever they’re at now. 

Winter: Yeah, it seemed absolutely doable. And that’s part of the reason that I went forward. If the number back then had been 40,000, which is what they have now, I don’t think I would’ve even started. I mean, who would? That just seems impossible. But 1,400 seems like a possible number. Especially just in a handful of countries: the US, Canada, I think maybe Japan at the time, they, they weren’t even in the UK, I don’t think, maybe Singapore, maybe Thailand. So it seemed like a project that was challenging, but not impossible. Now, twenty-eight years later, I know that it is in fact impossible. There’s no way I can actually visit every Starbucks. So, you know, I’ve adapted the sort of the objective to be, you know, visit as many Starbucks as possible, visit Starbucks in all the countries, visit noteworthy Starbucks, uh keep having experiences, meeting people, seeing where I can, I can take this. I’ve written a book that I’m hoping to get published. You know, I want to keep on posting videos whenever I hit milestone stores, you know, hoping to, to do more spots on TV, things like that. You know, hoping another documentary materializes, my regular spots on Time Crisis. 

You know, it just brings so much to my life besides challenging me, giving me purpose, allowing me to meet lots of people. Giving me purpose is probably the most important thing, uh, and that’s a thing that I talk about a lot in my book and talk a lot about in my interviews, that one of the paths to happiness is to find a purpose that you define for yourself and that can lead you to self-actualization, which is the highest point on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And, uh, as somebody who at fifty-three is happier than I have ever been in my life, definitely when I was younger, I can attest to the power of self-actualization. 

Borrego: So um, describe to me your, um lifestyles. You don’t have a permanent home, so you’re always on the road. Is that true? 

Winter: Not, not exactly. It just depends on when we’re talking about, you know. I have, of course, a tax address. I have actually two addresses, but, uh, when I’m working remotely, I’m on the road all the time. Uh, when I’m out on a Starbucking tour, I’m on the road all the time. Uh, but if I’m just working in an office, then I’m in one place. So I’ve been here in Rochester, New York since February. Um, technically I could have gone remote and worked from cafe to cafe. I did that in between 2020 and, uh, much of 2022. But that is expensive and exhausting, and it puts a lot of miles on my car. So one of the things that has changed in the last twenty-eight years of Starbucking is the economics. Uh, coffee’s more expensive. Travel is more expensive. Car maintenance is more expensive. Cars are getting more expensive. Airfare is more expensive. Uh, I can’t just spend money willy-nilly on Starbucks like I did when I was in my twenties and thirties. Uh, I was basically spending everything I had and going into debt and eventually going bankrupt on Starbucking. Can’t do that anymore. 

Borrego: So, um, take me through like a year in the life, like how much planning goes into your, your Starbucking journey. 

Winter: Uh, now, uh, a lot more than when I was younger. So, you know, I now, I’m pretty much planning my Starbucking trips around other things. So this weekend’s trip is around visiting a friend from Calgary who’s gonna be flying into Toronto. So we’re gonna gonna be hanging out on Friday, and then I’m gonna go visit some Starbucks around Ontario and then pop over into, uh, Detroit and visit some in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, on the way back to Rochester. Uh, right now I’m already thinking about my Thanksgiving trip to go see my mother in Panama, trying to figure out how I can best get to Turks and Caicos and see if I can fit another place like Jamaica or the Dominican Republic into that trip. Uh, and then of course, uh, I’m already thinking several years ahead to my next big, uh, global trip and trying to think about what my priorities will be there and what kind of financial targets I hit, need to hit, before I take those, uh, before I take that trip. Uh, this is completely different than twenty, twenty-five years ago, when I would just run off at any opportunity, uh, even to visit just a handful of stores, and that was grossly inefficient and expensive. 

And it, so one of the things, by the way, that I find most interesting about this project is that I’ve been doing it for so long, over twenty-eight years now, that it sort of can be used to illustrate how I have changed as a person. So by looking at how I’ve pursued Starbucks in different periods, uh, you know, you look at how you can observe how I’ve matured, uh, how I’ve recognized different priorities in life, how I’ve decided to balance my life, take care of a lot of responsibilities, like to my mother, to my financial self, to my health. So one way that I’ve described Starbucking to myself is kind of like a Rorschach test. So you look at Starbucking and two different people can see two completely different things. I would like people to see Starbucking as an expression of the purpose-driven self-actualized life. But let’s face it, some people are just gonna see it as a waste of time.

Borrego: Would you say, I know you start, um, when you originally, you know, started going to Starbucks, you mentioned it was, uh, you know, as a community building thing, and, um, but would you say it’s become harder or easier to uh make friends, um, you know, in your travels? 

Winter: For me, uh I would say that I’ve never been one to make friends in the same way that other people casually refer to friends. I think Starbucks, Starbucking, has made it easier just because it gives me the opportunity to meet so many more people. Um, without Starbucking, just living a life of just working, um, I don’t know how many people I would meet, especially if I weren’t, uh, traveling. It would probably be through Scrabble, uh, that, that would be my primary avenue for like meeting people and making friends. But, uh, Starbucking has really increased my exposure to people by an order of magnitude, and I’ve got connections with people all over the world. And, uh, that to me is really valuable. 

Borrego: What about your, uh, friends and family? What do they think? 

Winter: Uh, well, it’s hard to know what people really think, right? So, most people, uh, tend to be supportive. My father still probably, I mean, he stopped saying that it’s a waste of time. He’s, he probably spent ten to twenty years saying it, well, it was a waste of time and wouldn’t even participate in the documentary. But now I think he’s gotten used to it. And every once in a while he asked me, so, uh, how many Starbucks are you up to now? And I, I think he gets a kick out of when I’m on, traveling, when I’m out traveling the world, you know, asking me where I am and I guess telling his family or bragging to his family, oh, Rafael is in China or, uh, in London or wherever. So I think he likes that part of it. Um, and, uh, you know, I know that some of my friends sort of live vicariously through my travels. Uh, I imagine a lot of people do. That’s sort of one of the benefits of the social media area, social media era, that we can all live vicariously through other people by looking at their posts and enjoying places that, uh, we might not be able to get to now or perhaps ever. 

So I, you know, long story short, I think people approve and enjoy it. I’m, I’m sure there’s many though that still do not understand what motivates a person to put this much effort into something that many people would consider meaningless. And from a certain philosophical perspective, Starbucking is kind of meaningless. From a different perspective, it gives me purpose and has allowed me to achieve self-actualization, so it means everything. 

Borrego: What are your, what are your thoughts on, uh, the current state of Starbucks? Um, you know, its expanding, its new CEO?

Winter: Uh, I had hopes for this Brian Niccol guy. You know, he turned around Chipotle. But, uh, right away, in my opinion, he seemed to be making missteps. I mean, he said some good things like getting back to Starbucks as a community place to hang out, you know, getting away from the soulless pickup-only stores. Uh, but then he instituted a, uh, bathroom, water, hanging out in the, sitting in the lobby policy that seemed to say, Go away. Starbucks had, in my opinion, done great for decades, just not putting pressure on people to buy something. I, and you know, I’m sure many people did hang out and not buy anything, but I’m sure many people hung out for a few hours and then eventually got hungry and did buy something. I don’t think that policy was necessary. I don’t think shutting off the bathrooms or, you know, telling people that they had to buy something to get a cup of water, I don’t think that was a, that was a good look. And then this whole, uh, shuttering, uh, hundreds of stores, 568 by my count, over the course of a weekend and giving the baristas and the customers only a couple of days notice, that was just horrible and in defiance of all common sense, I mean, it just has created chaos.

Borrego: Do you enjoy Starbucks coffee? Um, I know you’ve mentioned getting…

Winter: No!

Borrego: …Yeah, I know you’ve mentioned, uh, getting into, uh, you know, third wave coffee. Um, so what are your, you know, thoughts on what coffee as a whole?

Winter: I loved Starbucks coffee when I started drinking it, and I would ignore all other coffees and go outta my way sometimes even. Like, like there was one time that I drove all, like, I sped all the way up I-35 from Austin back to Plano to try and make it to my local Starbucks in time just so I could get that cup because I really did love it so much. But over the course of the decade, um, as Starbucks began to expand, I truly believe that their coffee became objectively worse. And I think there’s a logical reason for that, that as they expanded and had to supply their pipeline of thousands and thousands more stores every few years, uh, they had to compromise on quality. I’m guessing that the three friends who started Starbucks in 1971, they were sourcing from Pete’s at the time, really did care about quality coffee. But at some point in the 2000s, um, I’d say Starbucks’s focus became these fancy drinks, like the frappuccinos, for example. Uh, a lot of sugars, a lot of flavors, a lot of whipped cream. And the taste of the coffee itself just didn’t matter as much because people were still gonna buy it. They couldn’t really notice. But me drinking just regular coffee, no milk, just some sugar, uh, really started to notice as the taste of their drip coffee went down. 

And then in 2011, I discovered specialty coffee, uh, otherwise known as artisanal coffee, or craft coffee, or third-wave coffee, in Portland, Oregon. And I started exploring those and I just absolutely fell in love. It was like night and day. As a philosopher, I like to use Plato’s parable of the cave. Whereas before I, while I was drinking coffee, I was like the person chained up in the cave only seeing shadows on the wall and believing that to be reality. But only when I became unshackled and went out into the sunlight and saw the real world, I could see what coffee really was. And that’s all these wonderful single-origin, lighter-roasted specialty coffees that I’ve been hunting down all over the country and all over the world. Sometimes in many places they’re hard to find, but I truly enjoy those. Uh, right now, the Starbucks that I drink is pretty much just to check a box off my list, because the number one rule of Starbucking is I have to drink the coffee, and, uh, when I need a jolt of caffeine. But no, I do not enjoy drinking Starbucks coffee anymore, and it makes me sad that it’s gotten so bad.

Borrego: Uh, do you have a favorite, uh, third-wave artisanal coffee shop? 

Winter: Here in Rochester, New York, it’s Ugly Duck, because they’re a multi-roaster and well, no, they’re not a multi roaster, they bring, every few months, they bring in a different roaster and they try not to repeat. So it has given me a chance to discover different roasters that are awesome, like Bolt, out of Rhode Island or Abracadabra, out of Vermont. I’m, uh, a big fan of the multi-roaster shops and the shops that bring in European coffees. So like Dayglow out of Los Angeles is a place that, uh, has a few shops out there. One in Chicago, uh, one or two in New York City. And every time I go they usually have an array of about a dozen different roasters, many from Europe, occasionally from Japan, uh, sometimes from Canada. And it gives me a chance to try all these coffees that, that I just don’t see in most places. Um, so I am constantly just discovering new roasters and falling in love with different coffees. Uh, and, uh, I really, really, really hope that Starbucks slows down after this mass closure, that they slow down their openings for the rest of ‘25 and ‘26 and ‘27. Um, one of my favorite Starbucking periods was right after their great purge of 2008, 2009. So that was like, uh, 2010, 2011, 2012 and ‘13, where there were so few North American stores for me to visit that I was able to focus on overseas stores and I was able to focus on independent coffee.

Borrego: Do you have anything, uh, special planned? I know you’re at twenty-eight years now. Do you ever have anything special planned for the 30th? 

Winter: Well, I’m hoping to do a world tour and I’m hoping that I can expand it. My last one was six months. I’m hoping that I can do more than six months. Uh, one boundary condition on that is that I don’t want to be away from my mother for too long. So to go longer than six months, um, you know, I have to make sure that there’s plenty of money in the bank for my cousins to be able to take care of her if something happens to me. 

Borrego: So Winter, um, as we start to wrap it up, are there any closing thoughts you wanna share? 

Winter: Um, I just want to reiterate, uh, what I think is the most important thing about Starbucking is that it has allowed me to achieve a purpose-driven life. And through a purpose-driven life, one can achieve self-actualization. And, uh, in my opinion, that is a way that you can be truly happy. I think the way that the media and popular culture, even the government to some extent, the messages that they put out about happiness are about acquiring more stuff, uh, making more money, buying a bigger car, having a bigger house, um, and I think that all these things are to a greater or lesser degree empty. And if they’re taken from you, if you lose them, then what do you have? Whereas if you’re pursuing a purpose that you yourself have defined, and through that purpose, you’re building self-esteem and achieving self-actualization, that’s something that can’t be taken from you. So the things that I’ve experienced, the things that I’ve accomplished through my Starbucking project can’t be taken away from me. You know, you can lose your house, you can lose your car, you can lose a relationship, you can lose your wife, but, uh, your accomplishments you can’t lose because they’re there forever.

Borrego: And, uh, where can people find you on the Internet? 

Winter: I am super easy to find. If you put ‘Starbucks everywhere’ into your browser, my website will come up and then you can find links to all my socials, the usual Instagram, X, Blue Sky, Twitter, uh, Facebook, all that fun stuff, as well as, uh, the index of all the stores that I’ve been to, uh, categorized by country, state, and city. So you could spend countless hours on my site just perusing through the photos, and you will never finish.

*Outro music*

For The Daily Texan, I’ve been Audio Producer Ryan Borrego. This story was edited and produced by me. Artwork for the story was created by Samantha Jewell. Music for this story was provided by Blue Dot Sessions.