Winter (programmer)
Winter is a freelance software programmer and consultant. He was previously known as John Winter Smith, but reported having legally changed his name to the mononym "Winter" in 2006. He is best known for his goal to visit every Starbucks location in the world, visiting as many as 29 locations in one day.
Background
Winter was born in Chicago, Illinois, with his family later moving to Houston, Texas. He attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he graduated with a double major in philosophy and computer science. Winter works as a freelance programmer.Winter also is a competitive Scrabble player, with over 9,000 tournament games under his belt.
Starbucks
In 1997 Winter began visiting various Starbucks locations, expressing the intent to visit every Starbucks location in the world. To minimize the amount of Starbucks locations, he eliminated any licensed stores to focus solely on those owned by the company. For each location to "count" he would drink "at least one four-ounce sample of caffeinated coffee from each store." He would also take a picture and post it on his website.Winter has estimated that he has spent over $100,000 on the project, drinking an average of 10 cups of coffee a day and once spending $1,400 on a plane ticket to purchase a cup of coffee from a Starbucks in British Columbia before it closed. As of January 2026, Winter reported having visited over 20,000 global locations, including over 15,000 in the United States and Canada.