Is Luckin Coffee Moving Toward Milk Tea Products?

Luckin Coffee stores have filled counters with dozens of bottles of concentrated fruit juice, and baristas say July launches mean weighing ingredients and hand-shaking cup after cup. Employees now report an August plan for a light milk tea called Qingqing Jasmine, prompting talk that the chain is edging back toward the milk tea track it once entered with its Xiaolu Tea sub-brand.

The shift matters for a coffee store network built on speed: fruit juice drinks add measuring, shaking and cleaning steps that slow service during order rushes. Luckin previously ran Xiaolu Tea in its early years, so the reported jasmine drink would extend a familiar line rather than a new direction, though no official launch confirmation has been released.

Recently, customers picking up their orders at Luckin Coffee stores were stunned by the dozen or so bottles of concentrated fruit juice lined up on the counter, as if they had wandered into a chemistry lab by mistake. These colorful ingredients have been the mainstay of Luckin's new products over the past two months, and they have also left baristas complaining endlessly—shaking endless shaker cups and weighing endless ingredients, making them joke that they feel more like milk tea shop employees. And in the August new product plan leaked in advance by employees, a light milk tea called "Qingqing Jasmine" once again sparked heated discussion, with some joking that it is the "Luckin version of Boya Juexian." Interestingly, Luckin actually launched the "Xiaolu Tea" sub-brand in its early years. Is it now returning to the milk tea track? This article will take you to find out.

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Recently, a netizen ordered a Luckin drink and was stunned by the scene on the counter when entering the store to pick it up.

The clerk who was taking inventory of materials lined up more than a dozen bottles of concentrated fruit juice on the worktable, a long row of colorful bottles that made people feel as if they had walked into a chemistry laboratory filled with reagents, bringing quite a visual impact to customers seeing it for the first time.

However, for partners at Luckin stores, these brightly colored concentrated fruit juices are precisely the source of their recent headaches. Many clerks have complained online that since July, most of Luckin's new products contain concentrated fruit juice. Making one cup requires measuring various ingredients one by one with a measuring cup, pouring them into a shaker cup, and then mixing them evenly by hand-shaking. Once there is a rush of orders, they may have to shake dozens of cups in a row.

The cumbersome cup-making process has drawn loud complaints from workers, who also hope that future new products will be less troublesome. But through the latest operational affairs, they learned in advance of Luckin's August launch schedule and lamented one after another that the future looked bleak.

According to internal news revealed by employees , among Luckin's August new products there is a drink called "Qingqing Jasmine." Judging from the ingredient composition, this new product should belong to the light milk tea category, with added green coffee liquid, milk, and jasmine tea. Many people jokingly call it the "Luckin version of Boya Juexian."

The lengthy recipe, complicated production steps, and new products that do not use espresso at all have made some Luckin workers sigh that they increasingly feel less like coffee button-pressers and more like milk tea shakers, so much so that they half-jokingly suggest Luckin simply change its name to "Luckin Milk Tea" to better match its current product tone.

"Who understands grape lemon tea, classic lemon tea, matcha lemon tea—first thing in the morning and it already makes your head unclear," "I increasingly don't understand these new products... they might as well be renamed Luckin's tea...," "Luckin has its own Chagee," "A coffee shop doesn't look like a coffee shop, and a milk tea shop doesn't look like a milk tea shop."

However, some veteran employees who have been with Luckin for several years are not too surprised by the upcoming light milk tea.

Luckin launched the "Xiaolu Tea" series in 2019 and later changed the series into the sub-brand "Xiaolu Tea luckintea." Veteran clerks recall the past, saying that at the time they had to remember more complex ingredient ratios than now, and in their daily work they not only had to make coffee drinks, but also shake out cup after cup of milk tea with toppings such as pearls and coconut jelly.

Judging from the official Weibo of Xiaolu Tea luckintea, the account's most recent update was in 2022. Perhaps due to a change in operating strategy, Luckin removed the "Xiaolu Tea" series and stopped operating the brand, instead developing various flavored coffee drinks and launching hit products such as coconut latte and sauce-flavored latte, making the public forget that it had once run into the milk tea track and even owned a milk tea brand.

So in the eyes of veteran employees, today's Luckin is merely trying to rediscover its original aspiration and relaunch some products that received good feedback a few years earlier after readjusting them. Also some people speculate that if the new product "Qingqing Jasmine" can receive good market feedback, the brand may revive the defunct "Xiaolu Tea."

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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