One Man Tries to Visit Every Starbucks

Winter has spent nearly 29 years on a goal that keeps becoming harder: visit every company-owned Starbucks in the world. He began in 1997. Today, his website records 20,595 stores visited, including 15,524 in the United States and Canada.

The project has a precise rule. Winter does not count a store merely because he passes it. He must personally enter the location and drink coffee. He also limits the project to company-owned Starbucks, rather than every business that serves the brand's drinks. These boundaries make his records meaningful, but they make the mission demanding.

The real challenge is not only distance. Starbucks changes while Winter travels. Shops open, close and sometimes move; the number of possible visits is not fixed. His goal resembles a finish line that keeps moving away. Reports have described trips through the United States, China, Japan, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, but an exact global total will always change.

That is why the story works as more than a coffee fact. Winter's project turns an ordinary routine into a way of seeing the world. It raises a human question about commitment: does a hobby need a final finish to be worthwhile? For Winter, travel and the act of entering each new shop appear to matter as much as completing an impossible list.