Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Starbucks Corp., the world’s largest coffee-shop chain, will sell beer and wine at more locations to lure customers during the slower afternoon time.

The chain, which first served alcohol in October 2010 at a Seattle store, will sell beer and wine in as many as 25 locations by the end of this year, the Seattle-based company said in a statement today. Stores in Chicago, Atlanta and Southern California are among the new locations, Starbucks said.

The specific stores have been “carefully selected” and are larger and have more seating than regular Starbucks sites, Clarice Turner, senior vice president of U.S. operations, said in an interview today. Starbucks also is selling fruit-and- cheese plates and focaccia with olive oil at the stores that serve alcohol, she said. The company isn’t considering the concept for the whole chain, Turner said.

“It won’t be at every Starbucks store ever,” she said.

At the six stores that currently sell alcohol in Seattle and Portland, Oregon, beer is $5 and glasses of wine are $7 to $9.

There are more than 10,700 Starbucks cafes in the U.S. and about 6,200 internationally.

Starbucks fell 1.9 percent to $47.22 at 2:02 p.m. in New York. The shares gained 43 percent last year.

--Editors: Kevin Orland, James Callan

To contact the reporter on this story: Leslie Patton in Chicago at lpatton5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Robin Ajello at rajello@bloomberg.net