Why is Luckin coffee cutting back on free employee drinks?

Luckin Coffee has tightened its employee drink benefits, ending free customization in stores. Staff who make drinks without following recipes receive surveillance warnings, and stores now ban free mixing coffee to curb waste. The changes follow cost-cutting and price increases introduced after the company's last financial report, drawing complaints from frontline workers and consumers.

The benefit was once a draw for baristas. Veteran employees say working four hours earned one employee drink, and a full day allowed one on shift plus another to take away. Some stores also let staff combine available ingredients into off-menu creations. Luckin coffee now treats that freedom as loss-making waste, so the perk that once attracted young workers is shrinking.

Working at a coffee shop—earning money while enjoying unlimited coffee—is one of the reasons many young people choose to become baristas. Luckin Coffee also once attracted numerous enthusiasts with its generous employee drink benefits: once they met the required work hours, they could enjoy drinks and even freely customize them. Recently, however, this benefit has been gradually tightened: employees who make drinks without following recipes receive surveillance warnings, stores prohibit free mixing to control waste, and frontline staff are airing grievances. Meanwhile, a series of price-increase and cost-cutting measures Luckin has implemented since last year's financial report was released have also sparked controversy among both consumers and employees. This article will sort out the ins and outs of the changes to Luckin's employee drink benefits, and the backlash its cost-cutting and efficiency-boosting strategy is facing.

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Some people enter the coffee industry out of curiosity and longing for the barista profession; others simply have their eye on the convenience of being able to drink a cup anytime in a café. Many coffee practitioners admit that they themselves love drinking coffee, so working at a coffee shop means fulfilling two wishes at once: earning money and drinking coffee for free.

Luckin's employees are no exception. Even when they are swamped during peak hours, as long as they have a free moment, making themselves an employee drink becomes a small reward to treat themselves—only after finishing that cup do they have the energy to face the next wave of drink orders.

Luckin was once quite generous with employee benefits. According to veteran employees, as long as they worked four hours, they could enjoy one employee drink; if they worked a full day, some would drink one on the spot and make an extra one to pack up and take away. Although individual stores might set restrictions on the use of ingredients, if employees didn't want a regular item from the menu, they could combine available materials themselves to make a special creation that wasn't on the menu at all.

For coffee lovers, this is undoubtedly an extremely attractive benefit, and many young people chose to join Luckin precisely because of the employee drinks. Recently, however, some employees reported that when they made employee drinks without following the recipe, they were caught on surveillance, causing the store to receive a warning and the store manager to be asked to write a report.

In addition, how to report the ingredient loss for employee drinks also gives many people a headache. According to some employees, in the past they could freely combine ingredients and make non-menu drinks, and when reporting loss they could either register each item individually or report it under the closest matching recipe drink. But now, many Luckin stores, in order to keep loss down, have explicitly prohibited employees from improvising drinks.

Many Luckin employees have expressed dissatisfaction with the shrinking benefits: "I came here just for the employee drinks, and now that I've worked enough hours they won't let me drink—so speechless," "Many stores around us don't allow it; when you ask, they just say they need to reduce loss, saving whatever they can," "Now they're cracking down on employee drinks again, really interesting—employees can't do anything right," "We've never really allowed DIY, and it's because of this loss issue."

Since the "Luckin March 1 Incident," employees have already been quite critical of the rule requiring one person to run a store alone, believing the company only cares about cold data and schedules shifts arbitrarily without considering the actual operating conditions of stores. Once there is a surge of orders but insufficient staff, negative reviews and complaints from customers increase, and the employees on shift bear more blame—an unbearable situation.

In an already unfriendly working environment, employee benefits have been cut again, which makes workers already struggling in dire straits even more vocal in their complaints about Luckin's recent reform measures.

Since last year's financial report was released, Luckin, in order to expand profit margins, first raised drink prices, then compressed labor costs and strictly controlled ingredient loss. But judging from feedback on the internet so far, the various moves to raise prices and cut costs have already triggered dissatisfaction among both consumers and employees at the same time, and Luckin's attempt to use them to improve the profitability of offline stores will likely backfire.

Image source: Internet

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