By Julie Jargon 

Starbucks Corp. aims to double sales from its food business in the U.S. over the next five years and become more of an evening food-and-wine destination as it continues its push to be more than just a coffee chain.

The Seattle-based chain known for its java in recent years has removed the word "coffee" from its logo and expanded food beyond its traditional breakfast pastries. During an investor conference on Thursday in which the company is expected to lay out its growth strategies for the next five years, Starbucks plans to announce a target for annual revenue from food in the U.S. market to double to more than $4 billion by fiscal 2019.

The nationwide rollout of La Boulange baked goods and sandwiches, completed earlier this year, has helped fuel sales growth and the company plans to expand its offerings at lunch to attract more customers at a slower time of day. "We now understand better than ever before how to develop a larger food business in our stores in the morning and increasingly at lunch," Starbucks Chief Operating Officer Troy Alstead said in an interview.

Starbucks also plans to dramatically expand its evening food-and-alcoholic beverages program. It now has 32 cafes with such offerings, and plans to increase that over the next five years to more than 2,700--equal to nearly a quarter of its more than 11,000 current U.S. stores. Some Starbucks cafes in Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Los Angeles offer small plates of cheese, vegetables and flatbread pizza, along with desserts, wine and beer after 4 p.m. "The opportunity is much bigger than we thought it would be," Mr. Alstead said.

The increased focus on food comes at a time when Starbucks and other mature restaurant brands have been trying to figure out how to juice sales in the U.S., where growth from opening new restaurants is limited. Some chains have added entirely new meal times while others have added new choices across the day.

Taco Bell, a unit of Yum Brands Inc., this year began offering breakfast, which has helped boost its results. But adding to the menu can backfire. McDonald's Corp., for example, has suffered from slow service as a result of bulking up its menu with offerings including lattes and sandwich wraps.

Some analysts say Starbucks isn't immune to the same problems, with its menu having increased in the last five years to 255 items from 181. Domestic traffic growth has slowed at Starbucks, but the company attributes that to customers' migration to online shopping and not to an increase in menu items.

Starbucks plans to speed service by offering new mobile ordering and payment technology that will enable customers to place orders before stepping in the cafe. The new app launched in Portland, Ore., on Wednesday and is scheduled to be rolled out across the country next year.

Overseas, Starbucks still has a lot of room to grow by opening new cafes. Four years ago, Starbucks said it would have more than 1,500 cafes in China by the end of 2015. It now expects to reach that goal in the next few weeks, and is setting a new target of doubling its China store count to more than 3,000 by 2019. The company also plans to double the number of cafes elsewhere in Asia--outside of China and Japan--to more than 4,000 in the next five years.

Write to Julie Jargon at julie.jargon@wsj.com

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