Why Is Luckin Coffee Paying Triple Wages to All Staff?

Luckin Coffee will pay triple holiday wages to all employees for the 2025 Spring Festival, including part-time, part-time plus, student part-time, and non-full-time workers, starting January 28. Previously, only full-time staff received the holiday rate. Notices were shared in internal work groups, though some regions had not yet received them.

The change follows a year of high turnover and labor shortages. Cost-cutting, rising performance targets, and pay that part-timers felt did not match their effort led many to resign before the Spring Festival. Extending triple pay to part-timers is a retention move meant to keep experienced staff and stores running through the holiday peak.

Recently, news emerged that Luckin Coffee will pay triple holiday wages to all employees for the 2025 Spring Festival, breaking the previous convention that only full-time employees enjoyed this benefit. Behind this move lies Luckin's struggle with high turnover and labor shortages over the past year. From cost-cutting and efficiency-boosting to escalating performance targets, frontline staff have faced mounting pressure, and part-timers' pay has not matched their effort, leading many employees to resign before the Spring Festival. To retain experienced workers and keep stores operating normally, Luckin has had to adopt a triple-wage strategy to cope with the labor shortage. This article reviews the cause of the incident, employee feedback, and industry background, and includes a brand recommendation from Front Street Coffee for readers who want to learn more.

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Recently, news that Luckin Coffee will pay triple wages to all employees during the Spring Festival has been circulating online, quickly sparking widespread discussion.

According to screenshots shared by workers on social platforms, Luckin has recently been issuing notices in multiple internal work groups, stating that this Spring Festival it will for the first time provide triple holiday wages to all employees (currently, regions such as Shanghai and Guangdong have not yet received the notice).

"To incentivize part-time partners' work enthusiasm and continuously enhance the overall compensation competitiveness of part-time partners, starting from the 2025 Spring Festival holiday (January 28), all part-time workers (including part-time plus & student part-time & non-full-time) will be paid at the triple holiday wage standard."

It is worth noting that in the past, Luckin only provided triple holiday wages to full-time employees, and there had long been internal rumors that "full-time staff would not be scheduled during holidays," so usually only store managers and assistant managers could actually receive triple wages, while part-timers could only look on enviously.

But according to this internal notice, starting this Spring Festival, not only full-time staff but all types of part-time workers will theoretically also be able to enjoy this benefit. This has surprised many workers while also making them curious about why Luckin suddenly changed its approach.

In fact, anyone who regularly follows news in Luckin's worker circles would know that in the just-passed 2024, frontline store employees did not have it easy.

Over the past year, workers first experienced the "March 1 incident," ushering in multiple new cost-cutting rules, followed by continuously escalating performance requirements such as order completion timeliness rates, hourly cup volume achievement rates, QR code scanning rates, and reduced work hours. Add to that endless packing, endless hand-washing, and endless overtime, and under such strict metrics, everyone's pressure was maxed out. Being so exhausted that they quit has become the norm in this circle.

Faced with understaffing, Luckin's approach has been to increase part-time hiring only during peak hours, for example prioritizing university students who have flexible schedules, can get up to speed quickly, and ensure stable output. However, based on everyone's feedback, the pay structure for this type of part-time work is not ideal: first, they feel the work content is not proportional to the income; second, scheduling is irregular, and once superiors "cut hours," the money they take home is even less. No wonder posts warning people off working at Luckin frequently appear on social platforms, posted by university students.

Although this approach does solve the problem of daily understaffing, with the upcoming Spring Festival, many employees plan to go home for the holiday, especially part-timers whose income is already low. At the thought of not only having to work during the holiday but also earning the same as usual, they would rather quit. As a result, these positions will inevitably see a large number of vacancies, and the most direct consequence is insufficient staffing. If stores want to keep operating during the Chinese New Year, they will have to recruit additional people.

In fact, amid this round of heated discussion, many Luckin employees also mentioned the underlying reasons in the comments: "Because the turnover rate is high, and we can't hire anyone," "No one to work. I'm in Guangzhou, and nearby stores all have labor shortages, none have enough staff, everyone says they won't stay for the New Year," "Seeking buddies to come support during the New Year," "Five people at the store are resigning for the New Year"... Although it is currently impossible to know exactly how short-staffed Luckin is, through these comments we can indeed feel that the brand is facing a labor shortage.

Precisely for this reason, Luckin is trying to retain experienced workers by "paying triple wages to all staff," thereby enabling major stores to maintain normal operations.

Image source: online screenshots

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