How Did the Luckin Coffee Restock Upset Buyers?

Luckin Coffee's collaboration with Black Myth: Wukong sold out its lenticular card posters in a single morning, angering buyers. The company promised a restock within 15 days. When new stock reached stores, customers found a production date of July 15, the same as the first batch, and questioned whether old inventory was passed off as new.

The episode quickly became a lesson in how merchandise drops play out in modern coffee culture. Buyers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou shared photos of the second batch and compared workmanship, while shoppers in regions farther from the manufacturers waited longer for deliveries. The confusion raised doubts about supply chain and inventory management and about the brand's sincerity.

Luckin Coffee's collaboration with "Black Myth: Wukong" ignited the market, with the lenticular card posters selling out rapidly and sparking consumer dissatisfaction. After the official promise of restocking within 15 days, some stores gradually received new stock, but customers discovered that the production date on the newly arrived posters was July 15, the same as the first batch, questioning whether the brand was using old inventory as restocked goods, which once again triggered discussions about Luckin's marketing strategy. The incident exposed multiple issues in the supply chain and inventory management of collaboration merchandise, and also made consumers doubt the brand's sincerity.

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On Monday two weeks ago, Luckin Coffee's collaboration event with "Black Myth: Wukong" was so overwhelmingly popular that offline stores were in chaos, and the lenticular card posters that gamers had been eagerly anticipating sold out in just one morning, causing widespread dissatisfaction among consumers and directly "cursing" Luckin onto the trending topics.

To appease customers' anger, Luckin officially posted on Weibo that afternoon, stating that the poster sellout exceeded their expectations, that a restocking plan had been formulated with an estimated production cycle of 15 days, and that netizens would be notified once the stores received the goods.

This notice stopped gamers who wanted to hunt for goods on second-hand platforms, and they began counting down the days for official updates. So, as soon as the promised 15 days passed, customers who had not yet bought the posters immediately opened the mini-program to check the status of the alliance packages that had already stopped being sold.

On social media, netizens in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other places who had already gotten the new batch of posters couldn't wait to take photos and share them, discussing with others the differences in workmanship between the two batches. At the same time, they spread the word to let friends in other regions who wanted to get the posters pay attention to local store news.

They said that places like Guangzhou and Shenzhen are closer to the merchandise manufacturers, so some stores had already received the new posters last weekend. Other regions, due to transportation distance issues, will have deviations in when the merchandise arrives at stores, but it should be delivered to stores nationwide in the near future. In addition, limited-edition cup sleeves, paper bags, etc. will also be gradually restocked to offline stores.

After longing for it day and night, the posters finally arrived. Players who got the merchandise were overjoyed and took out the exquisite frames they had prepared long ago to mount them. But some also noticed when opening the packaging that the production date printed on the outer packaging of the merchandise they had just gotten from the store was actually July 15.

Netizens who discovered this situation said that the production date of the previously snapped-up posters was July 15, while the production date of the latest batch of posters was August 28. This inevitably made consumers suspect that what they received was not reprinted merchandise.

Quite a few customers also noticed the abnormal production date. One customer compared the poster they had just bought, marked as produced on July 15, with the poster they had snatched two weeks earlier, and believed they should be from the same batch. This also led many consumers to question Luckin's marketing strategy.

Some speculated that perhaps the previous merchandise did have inventory but not much, so Luckin distributed the remaining old stock together with newly made versions to stores, and those consumers who got the old version might be the "lucky ones." But others believed that some stores might not have had any restocking at all, and instead just brought out the posters that had not continued to be given out before.

It cannot be denied that Luckin's collaboration with "Black Myth: Wukong" gained unprecedented attention and popularity, and consumers' purchasing enthusiasm led to supply shortages of merchandise at some stores. But in the view of some customers, since the first batch of posters had a considerable amount of inventory, the brand should have restocked the stores that were out of stock, rather than making consumers who love the collaboration IP wait two weeks in vain.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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