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The Traveling Salesman Problem Meets Starbucks
Posted by
michael
on Thu Jul 08, 2004 10:52 AM
from the secretly-replaced-with-folger's-crystals dept.
from the secretly-replaced-with-folger's-crystals dept.
Call Me Black Cloud writes "John 'Winter' Smith, a contract computer programmer, is living the traveling salesman problem. His personal quest is to visit every company-owned Starbucks and he's not doing too badly. After 7 years he's hit over 4,000 locations in the United States and 167 in Britain and Japan. What motivates him? That's one for the professionals to answer, but since Starbucks opens an average of 10 stores per week it doesn't look like Winter will be stopping any time soon. His website offers insight into why he does this ('to be different') and has pictures of the 4000+ Starbucks he's visited."
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How does one make a living... (Score:5, Funny)
One of the great unanswered questions.
Re:How does one make a living... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:How does one make a living... (Score:5, Funny)
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that the mind acquires speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking is a warning, it is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion...
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Re:How does one make a living... (Score:4, Funny)
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that the mind acquires speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking is a warning, it is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion...
I saw the words "Java" and "speed" in your post, and almost modded you as a troll. That is, until I noticed you were talking about coffee.
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10 stores a week (Score:3, Funny)
in 2104 we'll have over, what, 58-60,000 starbucks?
YES!
Re:10 stores a week (Score:5, Funny)
This reminds me of Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged:
(Life, the Universe and Ev8hing)
Parent
I hope he's left a pheromone trail... (Score:3, Interesting)
Venti me? (Score:4, Insightful)
Four bucks a cup! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Four bucks a cup! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Four bucks a cup! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Four bucks a cup! (Score:4, Insightful)
How do they display this "irritation"?
You know that the guy serving you doesn't give a care what you buy since he gets paid by the hour regardless of what you order? In fact, he might be happy that you have such a simple order since it doesn't involve alot of work or thinking.
Parent
now if he was CLEVER... (Score:5, Funny)
(yes, a douglas adams reference to the infinitely prolongued guy who insulted the universe in alphabetical order)
Re:now if he was CLEVER... (Score:5, Informative)
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To be different? (Score:4, Funny)
Not to be different -- to be famous (Score:5, Insightful)
What a sad indictment of society that people have some desperate need to be different and decide that the best way to satisfy that urge is to do something completely pointless like purchase products at every store of a multinational conglomerate. How exactly is becoming a complete and utter corporate slave a demonstration of how unique you are? I'd be much more impressed if this guy was attempting to visit every NON-Starbucks coffee shop. But that wouldn't garner him headlines, would it?
Let's face it: this guy doesn't want to be different, he wants to be famous, in his own pathetic way. You want to be different? How about volunteering for your local chapter of the non-profit organization of your choice? Not too many people do that. If that's not different enough for you, how about starting your own non-profit organization? Even fewer people do that. Hell, as long as you have this need to show everyone how different you are, might as well make it something that can benefit someone other than Starbuck's shareholders. Of course, none of these causes would get him a mention on slashdot, or the evening news, or anything else.
Call me a party-poorer but when I see stories about people following such pathetic attempts at gaining recognition, it makes me want to retch.
GMD
Parent
Re:Not to be different -- to be famous (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it that every time someone gets recognition for doing something that's not particularly useful, someone like you has to come along and insult his hobby and talk down to him about doing something more productive with his time.
Do you ever watch TV? Maybe you spend that time volunteering. Do you ever read Slashdot? Maybe you should spend that time volunteering. It's a ridiculous double standard you are setting when you and everyone else does pointless things to entertain themselves in their spare time, but when he chooses an activity that garners him some attention he is immediately admonished for not spending that time being productive instead.
Don't be a hater.
Parent
He's on TV! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm scheduled for a short interview on CNN Headline News Thusday, July 8, at approximately 7:45 PM EDT.
Gotta love that Headline News. Ever since the merger they avoid any type of real news like the plague. And the average age of the news presenters is, what, 13?
Re:He's on TV! (Score:4, Funny)
Oh shit - the plague is back?!?
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Traveling Salesman Problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Traveling Salesman Problem? (Score:5, Informative)
He's just visiting a lot of points in an ever-expanding graph without much regard for the optimal route, so yeah, it's not the TSP.
Parent
Re:Traveling Salesman Problem? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, and please insert "profit" and the appropriate "/item" tags around the list above, and let LaTeX number it for me. Thanx.
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Re:Traveling Salesman Problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Traveling Salesman Problem? (Score:5, Funny)
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This must be (Score:3, Funny)
Cost (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cost (Score:3, Funny)
Hmm, the units don't work out, but I thought I'd offer you my help anyway.
It comes to 32000 dollar stores per cup of coffe.
The thing is, *everyone* seems to complain about them, but the damn shops are always crowded! I think there is some double standard shinanigans going on...
End of the Universe (Score:5, Funny)
Re:End of the Universe (Score:3)
What's really important, though, is how many Starbucks he has seen across the street from another Starbucks.
This happened to me in Columbus, Ohio a few years back. It sufficiently freaked me out that I was numb for the rest of the day.
I think it is akin to the dream of seeing yourself of the street and your brain becomes overloaded, "how can I be here if I'm there". A primal urge crept into my skull suggesting that I had to destroy the other in order to assert my existence. It was all very Solaris [imdb.com] (the
Re:End of the Universe (Score:4, Informative)
While this is quite funny on the surface there is sound business reasoning behind it. Most traffic intersections are laid out in such a way that a shop on one corner is a major pain to get to from driving along the opposite side of the street. And then getting back the way you were headed requires a major detour. So in a high density area with a lot of traffic it is perfectly worthwhile to open two shops, each on opposite corners to catch customers headed in both directions. Keep in mind when opening your own shop, whether a franchise of a major chain or a private brand.
Parent
Re:End of the Universe (Score:5, Interesting)
It was actually accidental. When the new store opened (across the street from the old store), the old store's sales increased 20%, and the new store nearly matched it. So we did some reasearch and found that if we can put locations within 2-3 miles of eachother, the revenue of both stores will be higher.
The story was on maybe a year or more ago, so obviously I'm strongly paraphrasing.
At any rate, remember: being able to spit on one starbucks from another starbucks isn't really their idea. They just went with observed phenomina.
Parent
Re:End of the Universe (Score:3, Funny)
Which one that is is left as an exercise for the reader.
Well duh (Score:5, Funny)
Caffeine, obviously.
I'm personally more interested in ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Golfing Mongolia: A 2.3-Million-Yard Par 11,880 [nytimes.com] (free NYTimes reg. required)
Loser? ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh wait ... a handful of /.ers are now doing this!!!
Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest thing wrong right now is that when you add a new Vertex to the graph it could change the shortest path between two other verticies.
Damn I knew I shouldn't have picked up the coffee of the day on my lunch break.(Right now my job is testing the wireless network in several areas so I am wandering around with a laptop surfing
Mr. Caffeine (Score:5, Funny)
Presumably his camera has some serious jitter correction built in...
Fortune article, pseudo last names (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, the name he goes by is simply "Winter". The only reason he has the "John Smith" in his name is because too many things (like the DMV) break when presented with a single name.
He is also a fairly good tournament Scrabble player. Because the National Scrabble Association [scrabble-assoc.com]'s database can't handle single names either, he's registered as "Winter ZXQKJ".
Human Psychology (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm no psychologist, but I do wonder why people are driven to collect things, and, very often, they are driven to the point of mental illness. For example, people went nuts over those McDonalds Beanie Babies a while ago. Trash cans were filled with Happy Meals discarded uneaten, because people wanted only that 15-cent imported toy. Visiting every Starbucks is no different, where a person spends personal resources just playing catch-up to someone else's marketing scheme. I wish people were more resistent to this "collector's disease."
Say... (Score:3, Interesting)
I saw it at 64105 at 11:21 CST.
I hit reload and it's up over 65K now.
Watching the
What motivates him? (Score:5, Funny)
I, myself, have a desire to visit every McDonalds on the face fo the planet.
But first I have to buy a bulldozer, and a cargo plane to carry it between continents...
Oblig. (Score:4, Funny)
"Err... Yes"
"You're a jerk, Starbucks. A real kneebiter."
Higher prices, more buyers... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this is the same phenomenon we are seeing with Starbucks coffee, and the proliferation of legion's of coffee related drinks ending with chino or latte.
Math?? (Score:3, Interesting)
2555 days
Thats an average of 1.5655577299412915851272015655577 starbucks per day.
Opening 10 per week, and he is hitting 10.958904109589041095890410958899 per week.
They have 8000 stores now.
I calculate about 13 more years, and he should be able to enter maintenance.
Therefore, he is ahead of the curve.
Impressive, important and cool project! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is an amazing and important piece of work. The sheer volume of pictures, the sheer enormity of this effort is so impressive that I think this has to go down as one of those pieces of art/documentary/social commentary/lark that if it's preserved, people will look back on in 50 or 100 years (maybe less , maybe more) and just find terribly facinating.
First of all, just the pictures of all the architecture of locations in all 50 states alone is amazing. It's absolutely insane once you realize how much revenue and commerce Starbucks generates (all politics and love and hate of the company aside, it's just amazing when you see them all in one web site). Thes buildings had to be constructure, outfitted, opened, etc. The record of all these buildings, all these locations is like a mini snapshot of the whole U.S. from coast to coast and then world wide as well. It's an amazing piece of compare and contrast, and an amazing document.
Coming at it from the other side, I think the guy is a great artist also. This definitely qualifies as art in my mind, bordering on journalism, bordering on madness which is where a lot of great art comes from. Think of how many stories each state/city/area of a city/district tell about this experience, picture him going from store to store documenting this, etc. It's an endless story, he could write a book about it. Others have mentioned on here how comedians like Lewis Black have also seized on the sheer crazyness of the Starbucks phenomenon. Artists bring these issues into focus for people and the number of people critizing him here make me feel even stronger about the fact that he's doing something cool.
Winter is alright in my book. I don't think he's ruining the environment by travelling , I don't think he's a nut and don't think it's a waste of time. It's actually quite an important piece of work. Congratulations man.
Similar to certain English people... (Score:5, Interesting)
He sounds like he'd get on very well with Dave Gorman [davegorman.com], who, after a drunken bet, made it his goal to find 52 other people named Dave Gorman [amazon.co.uk], and also got a bit obsessed with Googlewhacking [amazon.com].
Also Danny Wallace [joinme.info] who after having bet Dave Gorman to find 52 Dave Gorman's got it into his head that he needed 1000 people to join him [amazon.com], without actually knowing what they were joining (there are now over 8000 joinees).
And then of course there is the inimitable Tony Hawks [tony-hawks.com] (not Tony Hawk) who needed to win a bet that he could hitch-hike around the entire coast of Ireland with a refridgerator [amazon.com].
All of their books are highly recommended (especially Join Me [joinme.info], which is the funniest book I've ever read.
Re:Haha. Starbucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
If that coffee shop goes under, it's not the fault of Starbucks, but the cheap customers. We have plenty of indy coffee shops in NYC that survive because there's enough people willing to put their money where their mouths are. If the shop goes under, then go rant to the PATRONS who decided the fate of the small shop; SB and WM only gives them the choice, they don't make it.
Parent
Re:Haha. Starbucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
The mom and pop's can't compete due to VOLUME. Walmart can buy at higher volumes. They can also hire more people (at low wages... who in turn can't afford to shop anywhere but Walmart). They also have more corporate backing to push them into places where they aren't wanted. To say that the consumers decide is a bit of a joke. It takes heavy sustained resistance to keep one out (as just happened in California), but Walmart can keep coming back again and again, plus they can advertise the
Re:Haha. Starbucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
F'en idiots couldn't even firebomb the place right. THEY DIDN"T EVEN START THE PLACE ON FIRE. YOU BREAK THE WINDOWS FIRST, THEN THROUGH THE FIREBOMB IN.
I'm definitely not a Starbucks fan (I prefer Caribou (the #2 chain)), but maybe some people like to get coffee at a place where they're not treated like they're interupting the employees by wanting to order. Or, they can get service even though they happen to be in a good mood and aren't wearing a completely black outfit to show that they're deep, dark people. IT'S FUCKING COFFEE PEOPLE! COFFEE! THEY SELL COFFEE!!
Fuckin nitwit.
Best quote from your article:
"if neighbors don't want the Starbucks, they should stay away from the store"
Parent
Re:let me be the first to say.... (Score:5, Funny)
Is this a test sir?
Anything you order is free sir. Don't worry, it's clean sir.
Your sure this isn't a test, sir? You were in here last Tuesday, standing right where you are now. You asked, "how good is security?" It's excellent sir, tight as a drum.
You said if anyone came asking, we'd have to mod him down, even you. This is a powerful gesture, sir.
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