SEATTLE (AP) - Starbucks Corp. will start serving up a new "everyday" brew on Tuesday, hoping the signature blend will help revive slumping sales in its crucial U.S. market.

To celebrate the launch, it will give away free 8 oz. cups of Pike Place Roast - named after its first store in Seattle's famed public market - at more than 7,000 U.S. stores from 9 to 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time.

In a statement released Monday, Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Schultz touted Pike Place Roast for its bold flavor, smooth finish and "subtle, rich flavors of cocoa and toasted nuts."

Schultz called the new blend "the best of anything we've ever done" at the company's annual shareholders meeting last month.

It will be freshly roasted, hand-scooped, freshly ground and brewed in small batches that sit for no longer than 30 minutes. It will be brewed, both regular and decaf, alongside rotating coffees of the week, and sold by the whole bean for $9.95 per pound.

Starbucks developed Pike Place Roast - testing some 30 roasts and 30 blends - after consulting with nearly 1,000 customers who clamored for a line of drip coffee that wouldn't switch from, say, an earthy Sumatra one week to a bright, citrusy Ethiopia Sidamo the next.

Consistently, customers kept saying: "Give us a coffee we can count on every day, all day, all week," Andrew Linnemann, Starbucks master coffee blender said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters.

Starbucks has spent the last few months sharpening its focus on the basics - a strategy Schultz is pushing as part of the company's efforts to reinvigorate its U.S. business, which has suffered amid a soft economy and growing competition from rivals ranging from McDonald's Corp. and Dunkin' Donuts to Peet's Coffee & Tea, Caribou Coffee and small, independent coffee shops.

One night in late February, the company shut down most of its U.S. stores for three hours to retrain baristas on espresso basics.

The company has also promised to start grinding all its brewed coffee in stores, which will bring back the pungent aroma many customers have missed since the company started using flavor-locked bags of pre-ground coffee years ago.

Schultz has acknowledged that declining U.S. home prices, a widespread credit crunch and rising gasoline and energy costs have undoubtedly made many consumers pare back on affordable luxuries like $4 lattes.

But he has repeatedly insisted he believes Starbucks' bigger problem was that it focused too much on growth in recent years and not enough on customers and its core product.

The company has scaled back the number of new U.S. stores it plans to open this year, while ramping up growth overseas, and remains committed to a long-term goal of having 40,000 stores worldwide. It has about 16,000 stores worldwide today, more than two-thirds of them in the United States.

Pike Place Roast will be the first Starbucks coffee bearing a new symbol the company created with Conservation International, showing that all beans are purchased from suppliers that meet high workplace and environmental standards, such as paying pickers well and requiring coffee to be grown in the shade without use of pesticides.