Why did Luckin coffee's frozen pear Americano divide drinkers?

Luckin Coffee launched a Frozen Pear Americano and Frozen Pear Latte under a co-branding deal with the drama Country Love. KFC's K COFFEE and Nestlé released frozen pear coffee drinks around the same time. Many netizens said Luckin's version tasted too sweet with a weak coffee presence, comparing it to a bottled rock sugar pear drink, which set off a heated discussion online.

The frozen pear is a Northeastern winter specialty, and last year's Harbin tourism boom helped it reach a national audience. Its sweet, juicy flesh makes it an easy pairing for dairy and espresso, though the sugar level can mask the coffee. Luckin also teased a coffee-free Big Frozen Pear Light Milk Tea for the following week.

In the depths of winter, the Northeastern specialty frozen pear has once again become a focal point, and this time it has sparked a new chemistry with coffee. KFC, Nestlé, and Luckin Coffee all coincidentally launched frozen pear coffee series, among which Luckin's "Big Frozen Pear Americano" co-branded with "Country Love" has attracted much attention. However, this new product has been collectively criticized by netizens for being too sweet and having a weak coffee presence, with many saying it tastes just like Master Kong's Rock Sugar Pear Drink, triggering a heated online discussion about the taste of frozen pear coffee.

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Every winter, a fruit in Northeast China jokingly dubbed "dark cuisine" always makes it onto the trending list on schedule, drawing nationwide curiosity and attention—this is the frozen pear. Last year, riding the explosive popularity of Harbin's ice and snow tourism, this black-skinned fruit successfully stepped out of the Northeast, allowing many friends from the South to see and taste its unique flavor for the first time.

According to local Northeasterners, frozen pears taste completely different from ordinary pears: the juice is sweet and abundant, the flesh is delicate and soft, without any of the coarse graininess of regular pears, and it's icy and refreshing on entry, making it more addictive with every bite. Throughout the three Northeastern provinces, frozen pears have never been absent from any winter.

As another cold winter arrives, frozen pears have also caught the attention of coffee R&D teams, forming a brand-new pairing with coffee. Recently, KFC's K COFFEE, Nestlé, and Luckin Coffee all coincidentally launched frozen pear-flavored coffee, and for a while, this Northeastern treasure specialty has been constantly trending on major social platforms alongside everyone's new product check-ins.

Yesterday, Luckin officially announced a co-branding collaboration with "Country Love," simultaneously launching two new products—"Big Frozen Pear Americano" and "Big Frozen Pear Latte"—and teased that a coffee-free "Big Frozen Pear Light Milk Tea" will be released next week. As soon as the news broke, many Northeastern folks couldn't hold back and wanted to personally verify whether Luckin had truly incorporated Northeastern characteristics into their coffee.

In fact, last week, KFC's coffee brand KCOFFEE had already launched a winter-exclusive drink "Hand-Shaken Frozen Pear Americano" in stores nationwide. To win the recognition of Northeastern consumers, the R&D team not only added pear juice to the coffee but also required that every iced Americano must be shaken before serving, and finally topped with half a real frozen pear, accompanied by a small spoon for customers to scoop out the frozen pear to eat. These meticulous details made consumers praise the sincerity.

In comparison, Luckin's version of frozen pear coffee is much simpler to make. Taking the Big Frozen Pear Iced Americano as an example, its recipe consists of coffee, pear-flavored fruit juice concentrate, water, and ice cubes. In other words, whether this drink can express the frozen pear flavor depends entirely on the performance of that concentrated juice, and whether the new product tastes good depends on whether the combination of espresso and diluted pear juice is harmonious.

Sure enough, many netizens, after tasting Luckin's Big Frozen Pear Americano, complained that it was "cloyingly sweet." Since the coffee's presence in this new product is extremely low, the first thing you taste is a strong sweet pear flavor, making the taste feel familiar. However, the first thing everyone associated it with was not the Northeastern specialty fruit, but a yellow bottled drink familiar to the whole country—Master Kong's Rock Sugar Pear Drink.

"Rock Sugar Pear, don't think I won't recognize you just because you changed your name," "Isn't the Big Frozen Pear Americano just an expensive substitute for Rock Sugar Pear?", "Oh, so Rock Sugar Pear is you," "Big Frozen Pear Americano = Master Kong's Rock Sugar Pear + negligible coffee," "I strongly suspect Luckin's Big Frozen Pear is a soft ad for Rock Sugar Pear!", "The Americano is just your excuse, Rock Sugar Pear is your true nature," "It tastes good, but isn't this just Master Kong's Rock Sugar Pear plus an Americano?"...

Although taste preferences vary from person to person, Luckin's current co-branded hot-selling Big Frozen Pear Americano, whether iced or hot, seems hard to escape the fate of being mistaken for Rock Sugar Pear.

Image source: Internet screenshot

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