Why Is the Coffee Store Talent War Escalating?

Cotti Coffee, founded by former Luckin founder Lu Zhengyao, is drawing franchisees and baristas away from Luckin Coffee. The rivalry has moved from the market into a fight for people and partners, with Cotti using the former Luckin founder label and low-threshold franchise terms to attract candidates who had planned to join Luckin but found its conditions strict.

The ties run deep. Cotti's CEO Qian Zhiya is a former Luckin subordinate, and former Luckin executives and system developers now work for Cotti. In third- and fourth-tier cities, Cotti opens stores next to Luckin to intercept customer traffic, and the brand is widely discussed in franchisee groups, showing how intense the competition for coffee store operators has become.

The competition between Cotti Coffee, founded by Lu Zhengyao, and Luckin Coffee is extending from the market to a battle for talent and franchisees. This article examines how Cotti, leveraging its "former Luckin founder" label and low-threshold policies, is attracting former Luckin franchisees and baristas to its camp, and analyzes its strategy of setting up shop right next to Luckin in third- and fourth-tier cities to directly intercept Luckin's customer traffic. It also looks at the strong Luckin background within Cotti and the head-to-head clashes between the two in small-town commercial districts. Through multiple cases and interviews, it reveals the fierce rivalry in the coffee sector.

Recently, a report by Time Finance pointed out that the "close-quarters battle" between Cotti Coffee, founded by Lu Zhengyao, and Luckin Coffee continues to escalate, and the flames of war have now spread to the level of poaching personnel.

According to the report, some potential franchisees who had originally planned to join Luckin chose to accept Lu Zhengyao's invitation and switch to Cotti Coffee, swayed by the "former Luckin founder" title and the highly attractive franchise terms.

In every corner of Cotti, the "former Luckin founder" label is almost ubiquitous. It appears not only in the franchisee recruitment plan on the official website, but also in the advertising slogans printed on store banners, and can even be heard from ground-promotion loudspeakers. Internally at Cotti, from the founder, executives, and franchisees to store managers and baristas, almost everyone has inextricable ties to Luckin. When Lu Zhengyao left Luckin, he first took with him his former subordinate Qian Zhiya, who became Cotti's CEO; he then successively recruited several former Luckin executives, such as the team that once built Luckin's store monitoring system, who now develop a new system for Cotti.

Time Finance also mentioned that in some coffee franchise groups, Cotti has become the most discussed brand, even appearing in Luckin franchisee group chats. Experienced potential franchisees had originally planned to join Luckin but hesitated because Luckin's franchise conditions are relatively stringent. Cotti, by contrast, claims to charge no franchise fee, adopts a joint-operation model that takes a service fee from store gross profit, and claims that investment can be recouped in as little as just over a month, while also promoting the slogan "Coffee Dreamer." Compared with Luckin, Cotti's threshold appears lower, so many people have shifted to this new camp.

According to another article published by Daily People on March 16, a franchisee who had once opened seven Luckin stores in a row also left Luckin at the end of last year and switched to Cotti. At first he opened only three stores, then kept looking for new sites, and now his scale continues to expand. He also renamed the "Linyi Luckin" official Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin accounts, which had accumulated 121,000 followers, to "Linyi Cotti," continuing to operate them as Cotti's official accounts.

The article also interviewed a franchise recruitment manager for Cotti Coffee in a third-tier city. According to him, Cotti's initial target was precisely third- and fourth-tier small cities, and the current period happens to be when Luckin is "sinking" into county towns. Therefore, within the commercial district of the same county town, a head-on collision between Luckin and Cotti is almost inevitable.

Near almost every newly opened Cotti store, a Luckin already exists, with the two located at most about 100 meters apart, and in some cases right next door to each other. The recruitment manager admitted frankly: what Cotti intercepts is precisely Luckin's customer traffic. By locating close by, surrounding it site by site, and far surpassing it in number, the goal is to "fight right up against the opponent."

According to the Time Finance report, in addition to franchisees, baristas are also a group Cotti focuses on poaching. Some baristas who once worked at Luckin, finding promotion difficult, were "poached" by Cotti in order to obtain better pay and higher positions. Cotti promised this barista that she could directly serve as store manager. In addition, Cotti told her that she could refer former Luckin colleagues she knew, saying that "anyone who comes over will start as an assistant store manager." For example, at a Cotti Coffee store in Luozhuang District, Linyi, the new store manager was directly poached by the franchisee from the neighboring Luckin store.

A Cotti expansion manager, in an interview with Tech Planet, said the main reason for choosing to work for Cotti was "to win some dignity." A major Cotti franchisee also repeatedly stressed that his shared goal with his team was to "take down Luckin." Lu Zhengyao's intent for revenge this time is already very obvious.

As netizens have commented, Cotti's strategy can be summed up as: while borrowing Luckin's popularity, it grabs Luckin's territory and business, and now it also wants to take Luckin's people.

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.