Coffee clash

The fashionable teardrop lamps and eggplant-on-harvest gold paint schemes are the same, as are the tastefully abstract prints on the wall and the caramel macchiatos being served up by barristas in signature green aprons. Yet something is unusual about the latest Starbucks to open in Boston. Its neighbors include a junk company, a row of used-car lots, the Plumbers and Gasfitters Local. This is the industrial heart of Dorchester, Dunkin' Donuts territory.

"Starbucks in a Dunkin' Donuts world," marveled a cashier named Karen at the South Bay Center Target store where the new Starbucks opened this week.

Home-grown Dunkin' Donuts has had a virtual lock on this corner of Boston, with 11 stores, one of them about 100 yards away across the parking lot, and people who claim generations of allegiance to the pink and orange.

Indeed, the famed purveyor of Seattle coffee house chic was viewed with suspicion during its Dorchester opening Wednesday. Some locals with greasy overalls and paint speckled shirts at a Dunkin' Donuts in nearby Edward Everett Square said they wouldn't be caught dead drinking the designer coffees at Starbucks.

"Everybody's used to Dunkin' Donuts," said Shawn Barry, a construction worker who packed up two large coffees -- black, of course -- for him and his buddy. "Why complicate the situation?"

But there is another line of thinking in the neighborhood, and it runs along the lines of "it might be nice to break out of the mold." Some residents, like Curtis Taylor, said Starbucks will prosper in such a place, precisely because it doesn't quite fit the usual profile.

"It's a novelty," said Taylor, a Dorchester resident since 1965. "They'll want to try it out."

The store opened amid a nationwide push by the Seattle-based coffee retailer to expand from upscale business districts and shopping meccas into more ethnically diverse and typically blue-collar areas, an effort that so far has generated revenue.

"Overwhelmingly we are being very well received in those communities," Starbucks spokeswoman Lara Wyss said. "They are using it as a measure of success: `We have our own Starbucks, now.' "

She said the "universal appeal" of its coffee drinks and other offerings will help the retailer win the hearts of Dorchester residents.

"It's a treat," Wyss said. "It's an affordable luxury."

For its part, Dunkin' Donuts says it's counting on deep roots and the kind of unbending loyalty for which Boston is known, the kind that drives Red Sox fans back to Fenway year after year.

"Among the first customers of the chain were the citizens of Dorchester," spokeswoman Michelle L. King said in a written statement. "We've been proudly serving our customers in Dorchester since the first shop opened on 875 Morrissey Boulevard in the 1950s, and with 11 shops in Dorchester today, we are active members of the Dorchester community."

It turns out that some seem abidingly true to the hometown chain, even wistful as they check out the new Starbucks.

"It would have been sweet if they had a Dunkin' Donuts in here," said Betty Smith, surveying the decor while her friend used one of the spacious Starbucks tables to assemble a stroller she had just purchased. "This would have been the spot."

The parking lot at Target was packed yesterday, and customers carted out shelving units and televisions, pocketbooks, and clothes. Not many carried Starbucks cups, but some say it's just a matter of time. "Starbucks is a great name," said Joseph Spada. "And people will like something different."

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.