The beauty of Starbucks—or any chain for that matter—is that you always know what you’re going to get, whether you’re in Chicago or Shanghai or Dubai or Dusseldorf or the next rhyming or alliterative city or hamlet of your choice. There will always be drip coffee. There will always be Frappuccinos. And there will always be people hunched over laptops.
In 1997, a man who prefers to identify himself only as Winter decided to visit them all. He was living in Plano, Texas, at the time, he told CNN, and made his first circle of friends at the local Starbucks. He reasoned that he could probably find the same sense of community at Starbucks wherever he went, and decided to visit every Starbucks in the world and post information about his visits to his blog, Starbucks Everywhere.
Back then, there were only 1,500 Starbucks in America. Now there are 30,000 all over the world. Nevertheless, he persists. According to his blog, he has visited 15,061 Starbucks in 49 countries on six continents. When he visits, he requests a sample of the drip coffee or an espresso. Then he takes a picture to document the visit. And then he moves on.
After all this time, he says he’s gotten tired of Starbucks coffee (he didn’t even like it that much to begin with), and he still hasn’t tried everything on the menu. Still, he keeps on. It’s a way to see the world. He describes it as “an extreme hobby.” If you’d like to help him out on this obviously costly quest, send a donation here.