Winter (born March 20, 1972, as Rafael Antonio Lozano Jr.) is a freelance software programmer and consultant.^[1] He was previously known as John Winter Smith, but reported having legally changed his name to the mononym "Winter" in 2006.^[2] He is best known for his goal to visit every Starbucks location in the world,^[3] visiting as many as 29 locations in one day.^[4]

Winter was born in Chicago, Illinois, with his family later moving to Houston, Texas.^[5] He attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he graduated with a double major in philosophy and computer science.^[6] Winter works as a freelance programmer.^[7]

Winter also is a competitive Scrabble player, with over 7,000 tournament games under his belt.^[8]

In 1997 Winter began visiting various Starbucks locations, expressing the intent to visit every Starbucks location in the world.^[5] To minimize the amount of Starbucks locations, he eliminated any licensed stores to focus solely on those owned by the company.^[9] For each location to "count" he would drink "at least one four-ounce sample of caffeinated coffee from each store."^[4] He would also take a picture and post it on his website.^[10]

Winter has estimated that he has spent over $100,000 on the project,^[11] 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.^[12] As of November 2021, Winter reported having visited over 16,000 global locations, including over 13,000 in the United States and Canada.^[13]

In 2006 Winter was the focus of the documentary Starbucking.^[14][15] Starbucking was directed by Bill Tangeman and premiered at the 2006 Omaha Film Festival,^[16] with the DVD released in April 2007.^[17] Tangeman filmed about 40 hours of footage over a one-year period of Winter traveling to various Starbucks locations and interacting with people,^[18] including a woman with whom he had been romantically involved.^[19] Critical reception for the film was mostly positive,^[20] with DVD Talk writing that although the film "doesn't offer much repeat viewing value", it was "highly watchable".^[21]