In 1997, Plano was a very different city. Tens of thousands less residents. No Prestonwood Baptist Church Christmas extravaganzas. No Plano West Senior High School. A growing city, Plano was working to develop its identity as more than just a suburb. And while corporations like JCPenney were making their first pilgrimage to Plano’s corporate tax-break haven, then-Plano resident Winter, who’s eccentric personality lends itself to the mononymous name change, was starting a journey that has baffled, inspired and caffeinated many.
Winter is a computer programmer, and in 1997 he was living at a Plano apartment and regularly meeting up with friends at a neighborhood Starbucks. Much like Plano at the time, Starbucks was growing exponentially and working to develop an identity.
In 1997, you were unlikely to have a local coffee shop or a Starbucks on every corner. Third places, a concept that highlights the importance of a place for people to hang out aside from work or home, were harder to find. Teens used shopping malls. Church enrollment began a decline. Children had playgrounds. And childless adults were left without many places to just be.
Winter saw Starbucks as the solution to this problem and sought to visit as many as possible. At that time, there were only 1,400 stores, and the potential to visit everyone within a lifetime felt within reach.
“I got used to hanging out [at the now-defunct location off of 75], and it immediately became my third place,” Winter says. “That is what made Starbucks an integral part of my life, and honestly, that is one of the reasons, in my opinion, that the company has been so successful that they were able to create a third place.”
First, he’d start visiting different stores in the Dallas area as they opened. His first official location after starting the project was in Casa Linda Plaza. Then, he started traveling to other cities and asking around until he found a location. Then, there was no website that held the information for every location.
“That is when I really became committed to Starbucks. It was not only the Starbucks, it was the road tripping, which I’d never really done to that extent, the travelling, seeing new places, and the challenge,” Winter says. “At that time, there was no website with a list of Starbucks, no Google Maps, so I was literally rolling into town, looking at the phonebook, trying to find a Starbucks, finding it on a paper map, going there and asking the baristas where another location was.”
Over 25 years later, Starbucks has almost 40,000 stores and is the second-largest fast food chain in the world (and not far behind McDonald’s at that.)
And while 40,000 stores might be an impossibility, Winter returned to Plano in late November to celebrate a big milestone — 20,000 locations visited.
Throughout the last 25 plus years, Winter has been taking pictures, notes and making connections at each location he visits. With tens of thousands of locations in the books, Starbucking, as he’s coined it, looks more like scouting for news stories of new locations opening and scheduling treks to hit more than one at a time, if possible.
He’s been to locations in every U.S. state and most territories, 11 Canadian provinces and territories, 16 Latin American/Caribbean countries, 24 Eurpean countries, nine Middle Eastern countries, 16 Asian/Pacific countries and three African countries.
The biggest challenges, he says, are funding and that locations seem to close or relocate just as much as new ones open.
It’s more than just a love for a restaurant chain, Winter says. He visits just as many local places and notes that they often are closer to Starbucks’ original vision of a third place than modern-day Starbucks.
After the pandemic, many locations went to drive-thru only, which Winter considers antithetical to the chain’s original mission.
“By trying to maximize throughput, they are compromising the customer service and the customer experience,” Winter said in Business Insider. “And I think it’s come full circle and started to hurt the profits.”
What’s next for the Starbucking aficionado? He’s looking for a publisher for his book about the experience so far and visiting new locations as he can. You can follow his journey at starbuckseverywhere.net.
