The Traveling Salesman Problem Meets Starbucks

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."

Comments

Traveling Salesman Problem?

[th1ckasabr1ck]

Am I correct that this has nothing to do with the traditional traveling salesman problem?

You know, finding the shortest route to hit all nodes by traveling along weighted edges in a finite graph?

Expensive

[Zorilla]

Assuming he bought a frappucino one during each visit, let's see:
4,000 visits x $23.50 for one Starbucks brand frappucino = $58,000 spent

Some people have expensive hobbies...

Two in one trip

[suso]

Actually, getting two in one day shouldn't be too hard since most of them are across the street from each other.