• by Karl Greenberg , July 31, 2009

Belly up to the barista. Starbucks this month began selling beer and wine at a Starbucks store in Seattle. The new place, renamed "15th Avenue Coffee and Tea," is the first of three that the company plans for its hometown.

If the test is successful, Starbucks -- which has 7,087 company-operated and 4,081 franchises in the U.S. -- will try similar changes elsewhere, using the new name and retraining baristas to do double duty as bartenders.

Experian Simmons, a New York-based research firm, says that consumer visits to Starbucks' Web site during the week after Starbucks announced its plan were 57% higher versus the same week in 2008.

And its winter 2009 National Consumer Study/National Hispanic Consumer Study, which polled 25,110 Americans -- 8.34% of whom said they had visited Starbucks in the past year -- found major similarities in different regions of the U.S. when it came to favorite categories of wine and beer.

More than half of Starbucks consumers from all regions said that of all beer and wine products, domestic wines were their favorite. Imported beers were in second place, and in all areas but the Northeast, light and low-cal beers were in third place (for the Northeast, imported wines were third-most-favored.) Fourth and fifth in most regions were either domestic beers or imported wines.

The differences came down to specific types of wine and beer. In all regions, Australian red was the favored imported table wine. Among domestic wines, Cabernet and Pinot Noir were favored in the Midwest and south, respectively, with Chardonnay favored in the Northeast and West.*

The leading imported brand of beer favored by Starbucks customers in all regions was Corona. The favored domestic beer brand in the Northeast and Midwest was Sam Adams, and in the South and West, it was Budweiser. Corona Light, Miller Lite and Coors Light were the most favored light beers.

Starbucks has been hard-pressed to grow same-store sales as competition has heated up from quick-servers like Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's, which recently launched McCafé.

* The article was amended post-publication.