Why do eight Luckin light milk tea recipes overwhelm baristas?

Luckin Coffee launched a light milk tea series whose options—hot or cold, sweetness level, large or extra-large cup, and caffeinated or caffeine-free—combine into eight distinct recipes. Customers get flexible ordering, but store staff must memorize eight similar recipe cards, and on launch day the order surge pushed workers to copy recipes onto cheat sheets taped to the counter.

The new line splits into light-caffeine and caffeine-free versions, with cup size and temperature each changing the ingredient ratios. Employees reported the first day was exhausting, since they had to shake milk tea to individual requests, keep other drinks moving, and hold store output steady. Even veteran baristas lost track of the recipes under pressure.

Luckin Coffee recently launched a light milk tea series, and when you stack up the options—hot or cold, sweetness level, cup size, caffeinated or not—it turns out there are eight completely different recipes. For customers, this is thoughtful personalization, but for store employees, it's an extreme test of memory. On the first day the new products launched, under the pressure of a surge in orders, staff rushed to copy the recipes onto cheat sheets and stick them on the counter—even veteran employees couldn't escape a "brain shutdown." This article takes you through how Luckin's workers struggled to survive among eight sets of recipes, and the "hacky" coping methods they came up with.

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Luckin officially launched its light milk tea series yesterday. When ordering, customers can freely choose cold or hot, sweetness level, large or extra-large cup, and whether it contains caffeine. With so many option combinations, the ordering experience is indeed much more convenient.

But in the eyes of Luckin store employees, once this convenience lands on the prep counter, it turns into a real "torture."

According to internal information, this new product is divided into two categories: light-caffeine and caffeine-free. In terms of cup size, there's a difference between large and extra-large, plus two temperatures, hot and cold. Each different combination changes the ingredient ratios. After running through the permutations, one cup of light milk tea ultimately corresponds to 8 different yet extremely similar recipe cards.

Having to memorize 8 subtly different recipes all at once made many people, already exhausted from memorizing recipes, feel resentful. Before the new products officially launched, some employees complained while memorizing, feeling the new recipes were too mentally draining. Others took an optimistic attitude, believing they'd naturally remember after actually making a few cups.

However, once they really got hands-on, the workers realized that not memorizing the recipes in advance would truly cause big problems.

Many employees reported that the first day of the light milk tea launch really wore them out. They not only had to shake milk tea according to customers' personalized requests, but also juggle making other regular best-selling drinks, and still ensure the store's overall order fulfillment timeliness. This meant employees' brains had to run at high speed at all times—the moment they saw the cup sticker, they had to immediately confirm the recipe and start making it.

With 8 sets of recipes to juggle, the light milk tea undoubtedly became a major test for employees during peak order surges. Some employees admitted that after seeing the label, they always had to pause for a moment before figuring out what to do, which greatly reduced their cup output efficiency.

So after several rounds of being battered by order surges, the workers had to admit that "a good memory is no match for a worn-out pen." Some organized the ingredient ratios for different light milk tea requests into tables, listing them one by one; others wrote down concise, clear preparation steps based on their own preferred memorization style, then stuck this homemade cheat sheet in the most conspicuous place on the counter, afraid they'd forget everything once things got busy.

To maintain user freshness, Luckin has always launched new products at a rapid pace, so for store employees, quickly memorizing recipes can be considered a core job skill. If they're experienced veterans, they may have long since developed their own memory tricks—once they find the pattern, they can easily handle the recipes for thirty or forty drinks.

But with this launch, even some veteran employees had to print out the new recipes and stick them on the wall. They said the 8-recipe drink not only stumped inexperienced newcomers, but also tripped up skilled workers who had already memorized too many recipes. Once order volume surged and the scene turned chaotic, they too couldn't avoid their minds going blank and mixing up ratios, followed immediately by mistakes, slowdowns, and other problems happening one after another.

However, although the recipe cheat sheets were blatantly posted on the wall, some employees said outright, "My eyes are the ruler, my hand is the scale." Once peak hours hit, they started improvising by feel, directly pouring various ingredients into the cup. Not only did it save time and effort, but they could also get cups out quickly and ensure timeliness. As for the taste—well, that was a bit up to chance~

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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