Room-temperature operation of laterally coupled distributed feedback laser diodes based on ZnSe compounds is presented. Longitudinal single-mode operation with a sidemode suppression of > 25 dB is obtained via a gain-coupling mechanism. Within one wafer, the emission energy can be changed over a range of 36 meV in the green spectral range simply by varying the period of the grating. Moreover, Gaussian-shaped near- and far-field patterns are obtained indicating device operation in the fundamental transversal mode.