/PRZWT/Coconut Latte, Iced Coconut Latte, Orange C Americano... Finally, it has been stamped with the "Luckin First" label, and Luckin's coconut milk latte has also been certified as the "global top-selling drink" among similar beverages in 2024. Recently, Luckin Coffee has received a series of "first-of-a-kind certifications" from independent third-party institutions, which has drawn industry attention. This has finally given the beverage industry, which was previously accustomed to mutual "borrowing", a legitimate "patent ownership".
Coffee, a globally popular drink that has been around for hundreds of years, was previously almost solidified into several classic forms such as espresso, Americano and latte. It was not until Luckin Coffee encountered the innovative China that it was finally played out in a new way, developing a new branch line and promoting the development of related upstream and downstream industries with a super hit product.
If this is a competition in the consumer sector, then Chinese coffee has achieved a certain degree of overtaking on a curve with its innovative flavors and convenient models. Luckin Coffee has led the innovation of freshly made coffee in China, while China has led the innovation of coffee worldwide.
The increasingly large and dynamic market has also forced the global coffee industry to pay attention to China. In 2024, the ICT International Coffee Tasting Competition, an authoritative event in the coffee industry, made its debut in Chinese mainland. In 2025, the "Olympics of the green Coffee Bean Competition" CoE(Cup of Excellence) made its debut in Yunnan, China, with Luckin Coffee becoming a strategic partner.
So, why is it Luckin Coffee? If an innovation depends on luck, then what do the almost annual bestsellers and new products rely on? Most importantly, in the current situation where Chinese enterprises are rushing overseas, can Luckin Coffee's "innovation power" and the Chinese coffee culture it has given rise to stage a comeback overseas?
The raw coconut latte has changed the direction of China's coffee industry
Luckin Coffee's original breakthrough in products began with the coconut milk latte.
In April 2021, Luckin Coffee ingeniously launched a raw coconut latte. For the first time, plant-based coconut milk is used without any milk. The combination of raw coconut milk and coffee liquid made many people at that time think it was "bold" and beyond their expectations. But looking back now, it seems reasonable. After all, coconut juice-related products have always been popular in China, and Chinese consumers have long been accustomed to it. Therefore, this combination is also called a "Chinese-style" latte.
The difficulty at that time lay in Luckin Coffee's need to use technology to lock in the aroma of "raw coconut", fully blend it with coffee, and test the taste effects produced by different thicknesses and dosages of coconut milk. It is said that Luckin Coffee and its partners spent over a year researching and improving, using cold-pressed raw coconut milk to avoid the loss of aroma and nutrients caused by conventional high-temperature treatment. Eventually, they created a unique taste that is fresh, natural, rich in layers, and refreshing without being greasy.
After its launch, the coconut milk latte became an instant hit across the Internet and was often snapped up, earning it the nickname "Luckin's out-of-stock King" from netizens. On June 30 of that year, despite Luckin Coffee having only 5,200 stores, the monthly sales volume of its raw coconut series products exceeded 10 million cups.
Whether one is a coffee fundamentalist or not, it must be admitted that the raw coconut latte has been pioneering in the coffee industry. So much so that some media joked that in the 21st century, there were two major inventions in China's beverage industry: one was the bubble milk tea from Taiwan Province, and the other was the raw coconut latte. From homogenization to personalization, from borrowing to local innovation, the coconut milk latte has changed the direction of China's coffee industry and coffee consumption. It can even be said that it initiated a "coffee-ism" with Chinese characteristics.
Since then, the whole country has imitated it, and the Internet celebrity has become a classic. The raw coconut latte has become a standard in coffee shops, and Luckin's raw materials, recipes, and flavors have also become the gold standard for defining this category. As of March this year, Luckin Coffee's coconut milk Latte has sold a total of 1.3 billion cups over the past four years. By September, the cumulative sales had exceeded 1.7 billion cups. This classic product has always maintained a strong momentum. Strong market demand, coupled with a series of micro-innovations in the beverage industry centered around "raw coconuts", once led to an increase in coconut prices. Data shows that in 2021, the purchase price of coconuts in Hainan was only 2 yuan each. By 2022, coconuts of the same quality could be sold for 6.5 yuan. Luckin Coffee has also given rise to more technologically advanced B-end coconut milk enterprises. This is the industrial dividend brought by a super blockbuster product.
By 2022, Luckin Coffee had adopted the same strategy to launch "fruit Coffee" and introduced the Orange C Americano. Blending the refreshing and sweet orange juice with the rich and bitter coffee liquid - two ingredients with a strong contrast - brings many people a brand-new coffee experience. For some people, the orange C Americano is indeed not as palatable as the raw coconut latte. But the people who like this product are very fond of it, and it has gradually accumulated more and more fans. By the second quarter of this year, the cumulative sales of Orange C Americano had exceeded 350 million cups. Since then, a series of products such as Yuzu C Americano and Lemon C Americano, which are "0 fat, real fruit juice, and low burden", have all been continuations of this idea.
The two earliest pioneering new product cases, the raw coconut latte and the orange C Americano, highlight Luckin Coffee's innovative vitality and avant-garde and bold breakthroughs as an emerging coffee brand in the industry, and also establish Luckin's role as a leader in the development of China's coffee industry and coffee consumption trends.
Luckin Coffee's Innovation Methodology: Digital Mechanism and Supply Chain Foundation
In 2020, Luckin Coffee launched 77 new products. In 2021, this figure rose to 113 models; in 2022, 140 new products were launched; in 2023, 102; and in 2024, 119. During this period, a large number of super bestsellers were born, such as thick milk latte, velvet latte, sauce-flavored latte, raw cheese latte, coconut cloud latte, small butter latte, Mascarpone cheese latte, and light jasmine · light milk tea.
Behind the number of bestsellers, Luckin Coffee clearly no longer relies on luck. Growing along with it is Luckin's R&D team and the innovative methodology they have gradually developed: the "product digitalization" R&D mechanism - Luckin aims to make "innovative vitality" a regular practice and find the key to understanding users' consumption trends. In the words of Zhou Weiming, senior vice president and head of product line at Luckin Coffee, "We don't believe in chance but in data."
It is learned that Luckin's R&D team will digitize various raw materials and flavors to quantitatively track the popular trends of beverages. For instance, they do not use words like "fragrant" or "sweet" to describe the flavor, but instead use specific numbers to refer to it. During the later stage of research and development, product developers derive countless product combinations through the control of data, and finally conduct actual flavor tests through raw materials. This is also the reason why Luckin Coffee can launch new products so quickly.
Meanwhile, the feedback of over a hundred new products each year can help Luckin Coffee further calibrate its grasp of the market and tastes, enrich its database, and thereby explore more bestsellers. Based on the logic of digital R&D bestsellers, Luckin Coffee's incubation of each new product must go through five major digital process departments, including product research, planning, R&D, optimization and experience, etc. Through scientific analysis at each stage and rapid responses closely following market trends as well as data accumulation, Luckin Coffee is able to ensure the success rate of its new products.
So, we often see that when Luckin Coffee launches a new product, it often makes dozens or even hundreds of formula changes, has thousands of consumers in multiple cities in the north and south conduct evaluations, and even tested over 6,000 raw materials in a certain two years. The overall product pass rate from experimentation to market launch is only 1.2%, and so on. This has become the norm.
In fact, such a digital innovation model and taste verification have completely changed the previous product formula of coffee shops and baristas that relied on mysterious stories to attract consumers. Luckin Coffee is attempting to reach the common divisor of the tastes of the majority.
In addition to its digital innovation mechanism, Luckin Coffee has been vigorously strengthening the construction of its back-end supply chain in recent years. The supply chain is the infrastructure that supports flexible innovation and the large-scale production of new products. In June this year, Luckin Coffee's fifth factory broke ground in Xiamen. This is the largest single coffee roasting factory in China. In the future, it will form a coffee roasting network with an annual capacity of 155,000 tons together with the bases in Kunshan, Pingnan and Qingdao, further enhancing Luckin's supply chain efficiency.
In addition, Luckin Coffee has also locked in the upstream origin of its core raw materials. Establish Arabica coffee bean production areas in Brazil and Ethiopia, set up Luckin's exclusive coconut island in Indonesia, and establish a dedicated jasmine production area in Hengzhou, Guangxi, to ensure a large-scale supply of high-quality raw materials. In early September, Luckin Coffee launched its first "Drink from the Origin Festival" for the first time, establishing connections with more raw material origins through products such as Aksu Apple Latte, Light Coffee Lemon Tea, and Guanxi Honey Pomelo Latte.
Among them, the establishment of the exclusive coconut island in Indonesia has extended Luckin's quality control of coconut lattes to the source of coconut cultivation. Beyond being a "pioneer", it has also attached a "origin grade" quality label to Luckin's coconut Lattes. This makes it so that no matter how other brands follow or imitate, they can only look up to Luckin.
In a certain sense, Luckin Coffee's innovation capacity also benefits from China's vast territory, abundant resources and infrastructure advantages: a wide variety of Chinese national geographical indication products ranging from tea to fruits, as well as its super-efficient supply chain capabilities, logistics advantages, and the empowerment of Internet, big data and Ai technologies. For instance, Luckin Coffee's integrated application of these infrastructures can be seen: In the already convenient mobile ordering process, Luckin Coffee has also introduced DeepSeek and Doubao large models, and launched Ai agents, all just to enable users to place orders with just a few words and receive personalized recommendations.
This is similar to what futurist Kevin Kelly called the "emergence" theory, the coupling of various innovative factors, and the "emergence" of more unexpected "innovative results". Therefore, Luckin Coffee's innovative power, born in China, is no accident. It is not only the result of Luckin's own exploration but also a vivid demonstration of China's "tropical rainforest" -style innovative ecosystem in the coffee industry.
Luckin Coffee's Innovation drives the "Age of Great Navigation" of Chinese Coffee
With an innovative consciousness, mechanism and ecosystem in place, and a solid supply chain foundation in place, what is more worth exploring is what Luckin Coffee's future imagination will be in both the Chinese and international markets?
First of all, in the Chinese market, a fatal attraction for all coffee brands lies in exploring "infinite possibilities".
Previously, Zhou Weiming, senior vice president of Luckin Coffee, well illustrated this issue. Why does Luckin Coffee work so hard on new product research and development? Zhou Weiming believes that this is closely related to Luckin Coffee's vision for Chinese people's coffee consumption. In his view, coffee culture has already taken shape in Europe and America, and drinking black coffee without milk is the mainstream. However, the coffee consumption preferences in China are still far from being determined. Only by constantly developing new products can the boundaries of Chinese consumers' coffee tastes be explored.
If we refer to the localization process of foreign fast food chains like McDonald's and KFC in China, the development of the coffee industry in China was undoubtedly slow before. The power to define coffee culture, coffee categories and flavors lies in the hands of Westerners who "naturally" drink coffee. If one deviates from those rigid "definitions" and standards, they will be ridiculed as being out of place, which hinders the "expansion" of coffee.
Many people may have forgotten that when Luckin Coffee was just getting started, even though its coffee bean varieties, quality and product types were the same as those of overseas brands, it was still ridiculed by many as "pot-washing water". At that time, the "foreign brand complex" of the middle class still existed.
However, as times have changed, the innovation of Chinese coffee has since coincided with and resonated with the natural confidence of the younger generation in China. In recent years, the consumer market has shifted from supply-driven to demand-driven. What young people like to drink can determine the innovation direction of coffee brands. More and more consumers are returning to the "product" itself, pursuing high quality, but they are not willing to pay for brand glory and excessively high premiums. The changes in the market and Luckin's innovation are mutually causal. Luckin's quality and style have contributed to the confidence of Chinese coffee, and its innovative vitality has even forced overseas brands to change their rigid menus.
Chinese coffee brands have ushered in their best era. What is foreseeable in the future will be an increasing number of coffee cups per person year by year, as well as the spread of coffee from first-tier cities to second - and third-tier cities and even towns. In this regard, Guo Jinyi, co-founder and CEO of Luckin Coffee, once said, "On average, each person in China only drinks 10 cups of coffee per year, while in many developed countries and regions, the consumption can reach 100 to 200 cups." China's coffee industry has entered a fast lane, and we have every chance to witness growth in the next ten years.
Secondly, as for overseas markets, what people are concerned about is whether Chinese coffee can, like other Chinese technological products, achieve a comeback against coffee powerhouses?
This year, we have witnessed Luckin Coffee making new moves. According to the second-quarter financial report, Luckin Coffee's total number of stores in the international market reached 89. Besides Singapore and Malaysia, two stores also started trial operations in New York, USA in the first half of the year. This move to enter North America has drawn extensive attention from overseas media. The New York Times reported that Luckin Coffee's arrival is an unsettling challenge, featuring creative beverages such as coconut llatte and velvet llatte, an efficient mobile ordering system, gamified applications, addictive coupons, and a future retail model.
Luckin Coffee did not disclose any sales figures in its financial report and even humbly stated that its current overseas expansion is still in the early exploration stage, so it will proceed steadily in its strategy. But to quote the first American astronaut to land on the moon, Luckin's small step is a giant leap for Chinese coffee. Twenty-five years ago, an American brand told Chinese people what coffee was. Twenty-five years from now, Chinese brands are set to infuse "new vitality" into American coffee culture.
"Unlike other stores, it's cool and fashionable." "I've never tried pineapple ice extract before, but it was unexpectedly delicious." The feedback from some young Americans indirectly reflects that Luckin Coffee is a coffee product and service experience worth trying for them. Even the blue deer head at the store entrance is a rare color scheme of coffee brands. Especially among the cafes brimming with an old-fashioned atmosphere.
Just like new energy vehicles, with the arrival of the 10,000-ton giant ships, an unprecedented era of great navigation for Chinese brands has arrived. We also have reasons to believe that the innovative coffee culture with Chinese characteristics and the digital consumption model can cross the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and make a comeback to the origin of what is called "coffee culture", evoking a wonderful resonance among young people on the other side of the ocean.
No one dares to say that China's raw coconut latte will not become an important piece of the coffee puzzle like Italy's Espresso and cappuccino, or the American Americano.
The legend of the raw coconut latte is far from over. And perhaps Luckin's R&D team is already pondering what magical fruits in the United States can fit into Chinese coffee cups?
