Why Is Luckin Coffee Trialing Calorie Labels on Cups?

Luckin Coffee has begun trialing a palm-sized product label sticker in selected stores in Guangzhou, Hangzhou and other Chinese cities, replacing the original small blue sticker. The new label keeps the order number and drink name but adds calories, fat content and other ingredient data, so customers can judge how healthy a drink is before they finish it.

The trial follows a broader tea and coffee industry practice of giving drinks a product identity card listing calories, sugar and caffeine. Customers have largely welcomed the move, and some expect a nationwide rollout. Staff, however, say the larger sticker crowds out the order notes they rely on and slows drink preparation during busy shifts.

Luckin Coffee recently trialed a brand-new product label sticker in some of its stores in Guangzhou, Hangzhou and other cities, replacing the original small blue label with a palm-sized sticker and adding ingredient information such as calories and fat content, making it easier for consumers to learn the nutritional data of their drinks. This change aligns with the current trend in the tea beverage industry of attaching a "product ID card" to drinks and has won recognition from many users. However, Luckin employees have quite a few complaints about it, believing that the large label sticker does not display the order notes they need most and instead slows down drink preparation efficiency. This controversy over the label sticker reflects the balancing challenge brands face between consumer demand and frontline operational efficiency.

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Recently, many Luckin customers have noticed when picking up their drinks that the takeaway cups in their hands are not quite the same as before. The small blue label originally stuck on the cup has been replaced by a palm-sized sticker that, in addition to routine content such as the order number and drink name, also includes a product identity marker listing data such as the calories and fat content of the beverage one by one.

This new-style product label sticker has made many netizens feel very curious. In recent years, consumers have paid increasing attention to drink ingredients, and the practice of attaching identity labels to drinks has gradually become popular among tea beverage brands, allowing customers to learn from a "product ID card" information they care about, such as calories, sugar content and caffeine content.

For this reason, Luckin's adjustment of the label sticker and labeling of product ingredients can be regarded in users' eyes as a thoughtful move, enabling them to use the labeled ingredient data to intuitively judge whether the drink they are having is healthy.

Judging from online gossip, Luckin's new batch of labels is currently being trialed only in some stores in Guangzhou, Hangzhou and other places, and some netizens speculate that it may be rolled out nationwide before long.

Many users have welcomed this, believing that Luckin's change this time responds to current consumer demand, and at the same time they have offered suggestions regarding the content displayed on the label sticker, hoping that information such as caffeine content and sugar content can be added. However, for Luckin workers, they would rather this palm-sized label paper display order notes.

Employees report that because Luckin's ordering system cannot satisfy users' personalized needs, many people add extra notes when placing orders, such as the amount of ice and reduced sugar. But this additional note information can only be seen from the receipt or the system backend and does not appear in the label content, causing them to spend time checking the receipt before making each order and confirming the order requirements before preparing the drink.

Previously, workers had complained that label stickers without order notes affected work efficiency, but the original small label stickers were already filled with routine product information and really had no extra space to write order notes. So staff members once suggested that Luckin switch to a large label sticker that could display user note content, so that when making drinks they could reduce the step of checking order notes.

However, to the employees' surprise, the long-awaited large label sticker did not include the user notes they most wanted to see. "Even after switching to such a large label, they still aren't willing to print the notes directly," "There's space but it still doesn't show the notes, which is really unreasonable," "Wouldn't it be better to make one that shows the notes?" "A completely useless enlarged label."

Besides not displaying note content, staff members also have other complaints about Luckin's large label sticker. "This label paper also comes out very slowly. When orders are flooding in, it's maddening," "During the morning rush I stick cups until I'm dying," "The length of the label paper is just not enough," "When orders are flooding in, the labels from the label machine could stretch ten li."

Luckin's use of more detailed product label stickers may be a good thing for consumers, but in the eyes of workers, this new label sticker is "chicken ribs" — something of little value yet too wasteful to discard. They believe the new label sticker neither makes their work more convenient nor may even affect their drink preparation efficiency, and they feel that the brand's changes to the label sticker did not take their daily work into consideration. Many even directly called on Luckin to keep things as they were and not switch to the new label sticker.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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