Why Does Luckin Coffee Throw Out Ingredients Every Two Days?

Luckin Coffee launches new drinks almost weekly, plus regional limited editions, and store employees say opened ingredients have short shelf lives. Unused portions are poured out bottle by bottle, and discarding a whole box every two days has become routine on evening shifts, wasting food and revealing a mismatch between launch pace and inventory control.

Once-popular items such as the Moutai collaboration and roasted coconut series became slow movers after the hype faded, leaving stores unable to sell through stocked ingredients. Faster menu turnover raises the risk that yesterday's hit sits unsold, so ordering, shelf-life limits and demand forecasting decide how much product ends up in the drain.

Luckin Coffee is known for its high-frequency new product launches, with new items appearing almost every week and regional exclusives emerging endlessly. However, consumers' fickleness is equally astonishing—former hit products like the Moutai series and the roasted coconut series quickly became slow-moving items once their popularity faded. Some store employees report that opened ingredients have extremely short shelf lives, and whatever can't be used up must be poured out bottle by bottle. Discarding a whole box every two days has become the norm for evening shifts. This not only causes food waste but also reflects the brand's imbalance between launching new products and inventory management. Front Street Coffee follows industry trends, and this article takes you behind the scenes at Luckin stores to understand the current state of ingredient waste.

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Among the many coffee brands, when it comes to the frequency of new product launches, Luckin is absolutely among the top. Earlier on, it maintained a pace of releasing a new product almost every week to update its menu, and some regions even rolled out limited editions, with drinks of all kinds of flavors leaving people dazzled.

But customers are often fickle—once they discover a new drink, they rush to buy it, which in turn drives more people to follow the trend, try it, and share photos.

Meanwhile, last year's hit products are slowly forgotten by consumers amid round after round of new product offensives. For example, the Moutai collaboration series that once went viral—as the collaboration hype faded, it has now become a slow-moving item in many stores, with dismal sales, leaving some stores unable to sell through their stocked ingredients and forced to pour entire boxes down the drain for disposal.

In addition, according to some Luckin employees, the roasted coconut series that once attracted celebrity fans to check in last year is now somewhat unwelcome. In the eyes of some consumers, this series is somewhat similar to the fresh coconut series that stores are currently pushing, and as the weather warms up, the refreshing fresh coconut is more favored. What was once a winter hit may now sell only a few cups a day.

Many Luckin employees have posted photos of their store refrigerators, with entire rows of ingredients needed for menu drinks. Among them, the ingredients used to make the Moutai series and roasted coconut series may sell only two or three cups several days after opening, and once opened, even if kept in the refrigerator, the shelf life is greatly shortened. Whatever can't be used up within the shelf life must be poured out bottle by bottle for disposal.

This situation has become the norm for evening shifts at some stores. Many employees say that recently they've been discarding a box every two days, and that box of ingredients may have been less than one-tenth used. While feeling the pain of wasting materials, they also hope Luckin will consider removing some poorly selling drinks from the menu or readjusting its product structure.

To meet consumers' growing demands, Luckin continuously launching all kinds of drinks is understandable in itself. It's just that changes in seasons and temperatures cause customers' tastes to shift dramatically. Fresh, refreshing fruit flavors are gradually becoming the new favorite, while the various hot drinks launched in winter are becoming increasingly invisible. Poor sales leave unused ingredients forced to wait for the day they are destroyed.

Employees who have a direct feel for the sales of various drinks in stores believe that although Luckin offers consumers many choices, the ones that truly sell well may just be the few new items launched for the season and the widely loved classics. As for those with novel flavors like the Moutai series and cheese series, once customers' novelty wears off and with no 9.9 yuan discount, they are all cast aside and find it hard to get customers to repurchase.

Netizens also understand the pain of Luckin employees when dealing with unused ingredients. However, from a food safety perspective, although discarding these unconsumed ingredients the same day is somewhat wasteful of food, it is also a manifestation of being seriously responsible to consumers.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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