How does the Frozen Rose trend differ from making coffee in a pot?

Luckin Coffee shared a tutorial showing how to turn its cup or an ordinary ice cup into a "Frozen Rose" by sealing a rose and ice cubes inside. The idea spread quickly, but store baristas worried customers would ask for it as an official item, leading to miscommunication and poor reviews.

Flower cups began as do-it-yourself projects online and later spread through brands like Mixue Bingcheng and Haidilao, whose zero-yuan Frozen Rose became a draw. Unlike making coffee in a pot, which follows a defined method, this trend is decoration only and has no standard recipe, so staff cannot easily fulfill requests for it.

Luckin Coffee recently posted a romantic tutorial on social media, teaching everyone how to make a "Frozen Rose" using a Luckin cup or an ordinary ice cup—sealing a rose and ice cubes inside a cup to create an eye-catching decoration for the office desk. This idea quickly sparked imitations and likes from netizens, but it also worried baristas in stores—because this is not an official product, and if customers come to the store asking for it, it could lead to misunderstandings and negative reviews. The popularity of flower cups can be traced back to netizen creativity, later boosted by brands like Mixue Bingcheng and Haidilao to become a traffic magnet. Front Street Coffee notes that although similar marketing can bring heat, it needs to balance the execution pressure on frontline employees.

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"Finish a Luckin cup + 1 rose + ice cubes and you can have simple romance!"

Not long ago, Luckin Coffee posted promotional messages on both Weibo and Xiaohongshu, showing consumers how to use its Luckin cups to create Luckin-style flower cups, named "Luckin Frozen Rose." If you don't have a Luckin cup on hand, a common ice cup can achieve a similar effect—the core is creating that sense of ritual.

The so-called "Frozen Rose" is, simply put, placing one or several roses into a transparent plastic bottle, adding ice cubes and water, and then sealing the bottle. Treated this way, the flowers are both beautiful and full of romance, and can be displayed on an office desk for several days—very pleasing to the eye.

In fact, this kind of "flower cup" originally came from netizens' DIY ideas. As more and more people imitated it and shared filtered photos on social platforms, flower cups quickly went viral. The first brand to notice the traffic potential of flower cups was Mixue Bingcheng—customers only need to buy a Snow King transparent cup, and staff will help make a flower cup, praised by netizens as "a cup full of romance."

What recently made flower cups popular again is thanks to Haidilao's 0-yuan "Frozen Rose." Customers can bring their own roses to a Haidilao store for a meal; after finishing hot pot, the roses are also sealed. If you don't want to bring your own roses, you can also choose to dine at Haidilao stores that give away free roses, and you can get the same thing. Just like that, sealing flowers into cups quickly became the latest traffic magnet of the season. Brands naturally caught the scent of traffic and actively followed suit, and Luckin was one of them.

After Luckin posted this romantic content, many netizens left comments praising how good-looking it was—"beautiful," "Luckin, you understand romance"—and some even shared their own DIY "flower cups" using Luckin coffee cups, with quite photogenic results.

At the same time, however, another group of people fiercely complained about Luckin's official account in the comments—they are Luckin's workers behind the bar. They worry that this kind of promotion will lead customers to bring these "beautiful photos" to stores to "make things difficult" for them.

Since the "Frozen Rose" shown in the images is merely a "play idea" proposed by the official account, not an officially launched Luckin product, stores do not stock it for sale, and baristas cannot provide it. But with the official account's heavy promotion, customers may easily mistake it for a new product from the brand, or assume that stores can provide a "Frozen Rose" making service. As a result, when staff tell customers it cannot be provided, it may invite negative reviews.

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