How does the Luckin Coffee scheduling system change store shifts?

Luckin Coffee is piloting a new scheduling system in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Chengdu. It forecasts peak hours from store sales data and sets minimum staffing for each shift. On the coming May Day holiday, one store was told to schedule a single person or even zero for the morning peak, because holiday sales were expected to fall.

Employees report the system shifts more tasks to part-time staff while full-time workers finish their assigned schedule. When a store is short-staffed, full-time employees may stay to protect their performance, and those extra hours are not recorded by the system. The upgrade follows March changes to shift arrangements at low-sales stores as Luckin addresses slower expansion and soft sales under its schedule+coffee efficiency push.

Luckin Coffee recently took the lead in piloting a new scheduling system in cities such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Chengdu. This system can predict peak hours based on store sales data and arrange the minimum manpower accordingly. While the new system improves efficiency, it has also sparked discussions about the allocation of work between full-time and part-time employees, responses to emergencies, and labor cost control. At the same time, Luckin's store expansion has slowed and sales have declined, gradually revealing the problem of redundant staffing. This system upgrade is seen as an important measure to reduce costs and increase efficiency. As coffee lovers, it may be worth learning about the impact of this change on store operations and employee experience.

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Luckin store employees in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Chengdu recently became the first to experience the adjusted scheduling system, earlier than other stores nationwide. According to employees who participated in the trial, the new system can predict peak hours based on the sales dynamics of store products, and then combine that with employee production efficiency to create streamlined and reasonable schedules, avoiding wasted manpower.

Taking the upcoming May Day holiday as an example, the system predicted that morning peak sales at a certain store might decline because of the holiday. Assuming employee production efficiency remains unchanged, the system suggested scheduling only 1 person for the morning shift, or even 0 people, striving to make every employee's work efficiency count where it matters most.

In addition, Luckin employees who have tried the new system said that the upgraded system appears more "reasonable" in arranging time for full-time and part-time employees. Full-time employees only need to complete their work according to the new schedule and can then rest, with all remaining tasks handed over to part-time employees. If a store suddenly becomes short-staffed, full-time employees trying to protect their performance will do "voluntary labor," and the hours they voluntarily put in will not be recorded by the system.

In March of this year, Luckin already carried out a round of reform regarding staffing arrangements at offline stores, adjusting employee shifts at some low-sales stores so that most employees handled bar duties alone, with one person on duty completing the related work. At that time, the system had not yet been upgraded, and store managers could still flexibly adjust schedules according to the store's actual operating conditions.

However, manual schedule adjustments may lead to unreasonable arrangements by store managers, or even force store employees to work overtime, and it is also difficult to efficiently match store operating conditions with employee production efficiency. Therefore, Luckin's programmers upgrading the scheduling system may be able to use the power of technology to maximize each employee's role in their position.

Data from Zhaimen Canyan shows that Luckin's store expansion speed has slowed recently. In March of this year, it added fewer than 400 stores, but the total number of stores has exceeded 18,000, showing that Luckin still needs to hire a large number of employees to ensure the normal operation of offline stores.

After canceling the 9.9 discount, although Luckin continuously launched new products and introduced co-branded campaigns, store sales remained sluggish. Recently, it even removed four slow-selling drinks in succession, leaving store employees to destroy ingredients such as syrup themselves. From this perspective, order volumes at Luckin stores have declined, and there may be redundancy in the employee team, which undoubtedly increases store operating costs.

Therefore, Luckin's adjustment of the scheduling system this time not only reflects the company's humanistic care for employees by arranging working hours in a more people-oriented way, allowing employees to fully demonstrate their abilities in their positions, but also avoids redundant staffing and reduces labor costs, achieving the effect of reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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