Now you can call them salad baristas

CHICAGO — Ignoring Howard Schultz’s concerns about the coffeehouse chain losing its way, Starbucks Corp. is expanding its lunch offerings and becoming more like what the industry already is calling it: a fast-food restaurant.

Starting Tuesday the Seattle-based company’s lunch menu will be bolstered with a line of premium salads priced between $5.25 and $5.50 that are more akin to those sold at Panera Bread so that it can better compete with McDonald’s and Burger King.

The salads will be offered initially in Seattle and other larger markets, according to a Starbucks spokesman, but not yet in the Spokane area.

McDonald’s sells four lettuce-based salads for $4 to $4.50 and allows customers to customize them by ordering grilled or fried chicken strips. Customers can choose their own dressing from six varieties of Newman’s Own dressing. Burger King offers a pair of lettuce-based salads for about $4 and five choices of dressing.

“We had the ability to create a menu that was not just an average salad — anyone can throw a few strips of chicken on top of some lettuce,” said Kelly Mattran, regional marketing manager for Starbucks, taking a swipe at McDonald’s. “This is not reflective of what our customers expect when they come into our stores,” she said.

Spokespeople for McDonald’s and Burger King did not return calls seeking comment.

Starbucks also is introducing a pair of yogurt parfaits ($3.45), a fruit and cheese snack plate ($5.75) and a vegetable snack plate ($4.95). The company already sells a half-dozen sandwiches and wraps.

Despite its lunch menu expansion, John Owens, an analyst with Morningstar Inc., a Chicago-based financial information company, said he did not see a competitive threat to McDonald’s. “There is not a lot of overlap of the Starbucks customer base and McDonald’s,” he said.

Owens said the salads could “generate stronger sales growth for Starbucks.”

Mattran said the chain’s expansion into salads is just another step to keep doing “what our customers are asking.”

“These are all salads that are meant to be more bistro or meal like than a traditional (lettuce) salad,” she said.

Nationally, the company will offer a pair of salads: a tomato mozzarella salad containing fresh mozzarella cheese, grape tomatoes, and basil and a southwestern flavor containing roasted corn and black bean salad topped with grilled chicken.

In the Chicago market, Starbucks will offer three salads: a pipette pasta salad topped with white chicken, salami, smoked mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes and fresh grape tomatoes; a white chicken in a Thai curry dressing on a bed of couscous; and a penne pasta salad topped with albacore tuna, sun-dried tomato pesto, Parmesan cheese, peas and sweet peppers.

The lunch menu expansion comes only four months after Schultz, Starbucks founder and chairman, warned about the “commodization of our brand” and “dilution” of the coffeehouse experience.

“We desperately need to look into the mirror and realize it’s time to get back to the core and make the changes necessary to evoke the heritage, the tradition and the passion that we all have for the true Starbucks experience,” Schultz wrote in a February memo to employees.

Kenneth Herbst, a marketing professor at the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University, said he believes the lunch expansion is in line with Schultz’s vision.

“This just provides another avenue where Starbucks can serve customers happily and in an innovative way. What a wonderful way to drive traffic,” Herbst said. “You’re not just going to get a reasonably priced salad, but you are going to splurge on a drink,” he said. “Instead of nothing, suddenly you have a $9 or $10 ticket.”