Chocolate chip salad dressing?

Chocolate chips have found their way into lots of weird things, but this may rank as the ickiest-sounding: salad dressing.

It gets even wackier. Like mac 'n cheese-flavor salad dressing. And PB&J. And, yes, being worked on are versions of root beer float and pancakes with syrup salad dressings.

Saladshots, a Millennial-friendly startup behind these oddball offerings in self-serve pouches hopes to do to salad dressing what Ben & Jerry's did to ice cream. Or what Chobani did to yogurt. Or what Jones Soda did to soft drinks.

"We can change the paradigm of salad dressing," says Adam Rubin, 43, founder of the West Hollywood, Calif.-based company. "Ben & Jerry put cookie dough into ice cream and said, 'Anything goes.' That's what we're doing with salad dressing."

Or, at least, trying to do. Saladshots kicks off a fund-raising campaign on Kickstarter this week with a modest goal of $30,000.

That's small potatoes in the nation's estimated $2 billion salad dressing market. But the company aims to catch the eyes -- and palates -- of Millennials interested in anything-goes flavors that also are low-calorie, low-sodium and sold in eco-friendly containers.

Rubin, an entrepreneur who is also a film director, got the idea after walking through the salad dressing aisle at a local grocery and noticing that everything looked the same. "For the longest time, salad dressings have been dominated by the same dressings we've eaten since we were kids," he says. "I asked myself, 'How can I make it more fun and healthy in a category that never changes?' "

That's when he got the idea for outside-the-box dressing flavors sold in the kind of eco-friendly, resealable pouches now used for everything from baby foods to apple sauces. The dressings are aimed not just for use on salads but for veggies, too.

Saladshots particularly will target women, Rubin says, "who like a dressing to toss in their purse and bring along with them."

And much like Jones Soda is kno! wn for its holiday-themed sodas, Saladshots plans future holiday-themed salad dressings. For Thanksgiving, for example, balsamic with cranberry. And, for Halloween, of course, pumpkin flavor.

Rubin says he hopes to have the salad dressing in stores within four to five months.

But he won't have an easy go of it, predicts Lynn Dornblaser, new product guru at the research firm Mintel.

'They may have an interesting idea, but they need to not call it salad dressing," she advises. "Chocolate and salad do not go together."

Dornblaser would be a most unlikely candidate for yet another salad dressing that Rubin says Saladshots might try: cotton candy.