Starbucks plans on improving food sales in the U.S. by adding more options to its lunch offerings in 2015.
The coffee chain explained to investors in a conference on Thursday that its goal is to double food revenue with hopes to exceed $4 billion in the next five years. The goal will, hopefully, be achieved once coffee drinkers begin to buy food at its cafes more often, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
The menu expansion has so far included new lunch sandwiches in the U.S. and the addition of more bakery items and breakfast foods, which Starbucks said has resulted in food contributing 2 percent of same-store sales growth in the U.S.
"We've had to help our customers learn we have different food," Troy Alstead, COO of Starbucks, said in a phone interview before the conference. "The food rollout has been the most operationally complex thing we've ever done in our stores."
Other tactics will be used to improve sales, such as the launch of a new mobile ordering and payment system that will let customers order drinks before showing up to the cafe, and the introduction of express stores, coffee trucks and upscale "reserve" shops that will offer premium specialized coffee sourced from small farms, Fortune reported.
The new food, wine and beer will debut at 3,000 of Starbucks' nearly 12,000 cafes in the U.S. The chain currently has 21,000 stores located around the world.
The U.S. is not the only focus at the moment for Starbucks, as the company also plans on doubling its stores in China to more than 3,000 by 2019.
