Why are Luckin Coffee workers unhappy with a hit drink?

Luckin Coffee's Qingqing Jasmine milk tea has become a top seller in many stores, but employees are asking the company to remove it from the menu. The problem lies in the preparation: staff must shake each cup by hand with a shaker, then wash the shaker and repeat. When several milk teas appear in one order, output speed drops sharply, and workers say the workload becomes overwhelming.

The complaints grew louder after employees learned that more shaker-based products are set to launch. Unlike drinks prepared with a coffee machine, these recipes add manual steps for every cup sold. Workers have proposed solutions such as simplifying the recipe or limiting the drink's availability during peak hours, while management has not yet responded publicly to the delisting campaign.

Luckin Coffee has recently grabbed plenty of attention with its co-branded campaigns and its new product, Qingqing Jasmine, which netizens have dubbed the "stand-in for Boya Juexian." Sales of this milk tea have been soaring all the way, making it the top seller in quite a few stores. Yet in sharp contrast to its hot sales, a chorus of "vote to delist Qingqing Jasmine" has risen within Luckin's employee circles. The reason is none other than this drink's complicated production process, which requires staff to hand-shake it cup by cup with a shaker, driving people to the brink of collapse when orders pile up. As more new products that require a shaker are about to launch next week, employees' anxiety has reached its peak. This article will take a deep dive into the reasons behind this phenomenon and explore the solutions employees have proposed.

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Over the past two weeks, Luckin Coffee has truly been in the spotlight, successfully breaking out of its circle through a new co-branding tie-up, with a number of new products going on to become store bestsellers. Among them, Qingqing Jasmine, which netizens have crowned the "stand-in for Boya Juexian," has seen sales keep climbing since its launch, firmly holding the top-seller throne in many stores.

But unexpectedly, as this drink's popularity surged, a large wave of "cast 1 vote to delist Qingqing Jasmine" voices emerged within Luckin's worker circles, with employees wishing this hot-selling milk tea would disappear from the ordering system. Especially after learning about the batch of products set to launch next week, the calls to "take Qingqing Jasmine off the menu" grew even louder.

It is said that the reason Luckin employees are so "fed up" with this hit new product lies in its rather cumbersome production process. Compared with other drinks, Qingqing Jasmine's recipe is already complex, and according to standard operating procedures, staff must shake it cup by cup using a shaker.

This means that when multiple milk teas appear in an order, workers have no choice but to repeat the cycle of "shaking milk tea, washing the shaker, then shaking milk tea again," seriously dragging down output speed. If there are also non-milk-tea drinks waiting to be made at the same time, the employee on shift is practically "going through tribulation," wishing they could clone themselves to handle both pressing coffee machine buttons and shaking tea at once.

Employees report that since this milk tea was introduced, the number of order-rushing requests at stores has risen noticeably, and complaints about slow service have increased quite a bit as well. To speed things up, some simply switched from shaking the shaker to stirring, hoping to shorten the production time.

But this shortcut cannot truly solve the problem of low efficiency. A large number of customers still complain that waiting times to pick up their orders have grown longer, and they express dissatisfaction with the staff's output speed.

In addition, according to internal sources, next week Luckin will launch multiple new drinks that must be made with a shaker, and it will continue to expand its milk tea category afterward. This news makes many people, at the mere thought of the massive wave of orders that may come after the new products hit the shelves, let out marmot-like screams, saying outright that they cannot imagine what a "tragic scene" it will be behind the bar by then.

Stores with high output have already urgently bought additional shakers to cope with the new products launching next. But more workers hope to solve the problem at its root, such as "kicking" the "source of all evil" milk tea out of their stores. They grumble: "The coffee machine is sitting idle, and we're making Qingqing Jasmine all day long," "Qing! Qing! Jas! Mine! When on earth will it be delisted!!!", "I get annoyed the moment I see these four characters on a label," "When will Qingqing Jasmine have its fall from grace?"

However, despite the strong calls for "Qingqing Jasmine to be delisted as soon as possible," after seeing the latest internal operational arrangements, workers have already understood that Luckin will not give up this hit product as they wish, and will only launch more products of the same kind afterward to meet customer demand. Therefore, they can only briefly escape the "sea of suffering" of shaking milk tea when the relevant ingredients run out, and enjoy a moment of happiness.

Many employees believe Luckin could simply revive the operation of "Little Deer Tea" and let its milk tea products "shine on their own." Or it could borrow a page from the milk tea shop next door by equipping stores with more devices and arranging more staff to be on duty at the same time, so as to support its ambition of "wanting both coffee and milk tea."

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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