Inside Luckin Coffee: Strategy, model, and international playbook
What's inside this report
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In just eight years, Luckin Coffee has gone from startup to China’s largest coffee chain—surpassing Starbucks in domestic store count and redefining what a modern F&B business can look like. Despite being delisted from Nasdaq in 2020 after facing a major accounting scandal, the company staged a remarkable comeback, now operating over 24,000 stores globally and launching viral products that sell millions of cups in a single day.
But Luckin Coffee isn’t your typical coffee chain. It operates more like a tech company—app-first, data-fueled, and built for rapid replication. Now, with its eyes set on the U.S. and other global markets, the question is: can it win abroad?
The 32-page report covers the following sections and topics:
1. Who is Luckin Coffee?
• Who is Luckin Coffee?
• Luckin Coffee has added almost 20,000 stores since 2019
• Luckin Coffee’s wild ride: founding, scandal and comeback
• The comeback – from fraud till today
• The current top leadership of Luckin Coffee
2. Luckin Coffee’s business model
• A glimpse into Luckin Coffee’s model through Iced lattes
• How does Luckin Coffee compare with its competitors in the U.S.
• Luckin Coffee isn’t your typical coffee chain
• Luckin Coffee knows more about its customers than other chains
• Luckin Coffee’s R&D engine: 119 SKUs Launched in 2024
• Luckin Coffee’s R&D engine: Cheese latte case study
• How to make an iced latte: same drink, two different systems
• Luckin Coffee operates more like an ecommerce company rather than an F&B chain
3. Will Luckin Coffee win in the U.S.?
• Singapore is Luckin Coffee’s first step in its international expansion
• But the U.S. market is the bigger prize
• However, the U.S. coffee landscape is highly mature with many established competitors
• Using the POP-L framework to distill Luckin Coffee’s overseas expansion strategy
• POP-L Insight #1: Most product-side challenges are solvable
• POP-L Insight #2: Luckin Coffee already has leadership and people foundation in place
• POP-L Insight #3: The true challenge for Luckin Coffee’s global expansion is its organisation
• Ultimately, its real asset is a scalable, data-driven retail platform that can be replicated
