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What if I told you

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your Dunkin' iced coffee could be cheaper
at a different Dunkin' nearby?

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Well, a Tufts University student
discovered that Dunkin' prices vary

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store to store.

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So he invented a free tool for users
to find the best Dunkin' deal.

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Reporter Dana Gerber
joined us with a new way to sip smarter.

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All right, Dana.

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Help me understand how this is a big deal.

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Gas prices.

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If you go from one station
to the next station, if it's the same,

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you know, same brand,
the gas prices could be different.

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Location of location.
What's the big deal with Dunkin'?

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Yeah.

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So, I mean, I think the big difference
between an example like that is, you know,

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gas prices are on this massive marquee
outside the station.

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You can see it as you drive up,
and you can decide whether or not

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you want to try to find a better deal
versus with Dunkin' on the app,

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you can't see the price of an item
until you've selected a location,

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even if there's another location.

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As any Bostonian will know,
like one more block south.

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So you you know, you are trying to find,

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you know, the iced coffee
that's like the cheapest near you.

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But you can't.

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To do that, you would have to go
through location by location,

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and that can be very tedious,
especially when you're under caffeinated.

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so I think that's the big

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the big difference
is just the level of transparency.

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When you mentioned transparency,
what are some of the price differences?

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Because in the article

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I was surprised by just this,
just how big a swing it could be.

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You know, using the Boston Common
as like your your starting point.

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You know, if you even said it
like within a couple miles,

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the difference can be like $4.15
downtown on Tremont Street versus like

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$2.99 in East Boston, which, you know,
you have to get on the blue line.

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But that's a
like more than a dollar difference.

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And, you know, if you got Dunkin every day
is a lot of New Englanders do that.

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That adds up.

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Yeah.

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That actually burns

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my whole gasoline theory
because a $2 gas swing, dollar gas swing.

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That's not happening.
Yeah. Station to station.

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Okay, so what is the name of this tool
and who invented it?

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Yeah, so it's called Dunkin Scout.

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yeah.

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He's the inventor of the tool.

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no, his name is Jack Burton.

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He told me that he came up with that name
through ChatGPT.

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So it was a it's a very,
very techie, situation.

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but, yeah, he's a computer
engineering major at Tufts University.

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He's a junior, and, you know, he built it
just sort of to test

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his programing chops as a sort of side
project before the fall semester began.

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And and yeah,
the reception has been pretty strong.

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How do you use the tool exactly?

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Yeah.

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So it's built on this,
computer program called Python.

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So it's a little bit techie,
but basically all you need to do

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is put in the coordinates
you want to start up.

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So you can find those on Google Maps
or other websites.

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So you put in your,
your coordinates, the menu item

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you're looking to to suss out and how far
you're willing to travel for it.

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And it returns
you know, a maximum of like 60 results

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and then tells you which one
is, the closest and cheapest.

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So, you know, if there are like
three locations that have the 299 deal,

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it'll tell you, you know,
which one is closest.

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How popular is the tool?

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Are people
using it? Is Dunkin' bad and like,

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what's going on with this?

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I mean, it seems very worthwhile. Tool.

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Yeah. I reached out to.
I will say Dunkin' does not seem to be mad.

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I reached,

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I reached out to them and they said,
you know, this is par for the course.

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We have.

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it's it's almost an entirely franchised
business model where,

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you know, that's why prices can differ
because different franchisees

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price things depending on what Dunkin' said
was local market conditions.

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So, you know, that
can mean any number of things.

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But to your point about how people
are using it, you know, the way I found

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it was through Reddit,
where this Tufts University student,

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posted a link to the tool in,

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the Boston subreddit,
and people were quite enthusiastic.

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It had, I think, over 700 upvotes
when I last checked, and there were

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lots of people in the comments saying,
you know, I've followed this for forever.

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Thank you so much for making this
so clearly folks

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are getting some use out of it.

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So the tool is popular online.

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it seems like it is necessary.

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The swings are quite big.

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Dana Gerber,
thank you so much for joining us

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and telling us
where we should get our coffee.

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Thank you so much for having me.

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For daily access to Boston Globe today.

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