How Does Luckin Coffee Penalize Early Order Completion?

Luckin Coffee has started penalizing stores caught scanning orders as completed before drinks are actually ready. An auditor who finds an early completion deducts 100 base points from the store in one go, which cuts the monthly performance bonuses of all staff and forces the store to close for rectification. Employees say the rule leaves them squeezed between penalties and falling on-time rates.

Each Luckin store begins with 100 points, and auditors subtract points per violation, so a single early scan can wipe out a store's entire score. In understaffed locations, baristas must choose between losing performance points and posting weak fulfillment data, and staff across regions report rising pressure under the new enforcement.

Luckin Coffee is known for its fast order fulfillment, but recently customers have complained that staff scan orders as completed ahead of time even when the drinks are not actually ready. In response, Luckin headquarters has begun cracking down on this type of violation. Once an auditor discovers an early order completion, the store will have 100 base points deducted outright, hurting the performance bonuses of the entire staff and forcing the store to close for rectification. Faced with the new policy, employees are caught in a dilemma: completing orders early may bring heavy penalties, while not doing so causes the on-time fulfillment rate to drop noticeably. In understaffed stores, baristas have no choice but to struggle between "losing performance points" and "ugly data," and work pressure has surged. This article compiles feedback from employees in various regions to present the real store ecosystem under Luckin's new rules.

In most consumers' minds, Luckin Coffee has long been a leader in order fulfillment efficiency among chain brands. When you order ahead during the morning commute, you can basically grab your finished drink as soon as you arrive at the store. However, customers on social media occasionally report that when they arrive, they find staff scanning orders as completed ahead of time even though the drinks have not actually been made yet.

In response to this kind of feedback, Luckin has begun strictly controlling stores that fail to follow standard order fulfillment procedures. Recently, employees in many locations have posted online about their stores being penalized for scanning orders as completed ahead of time. What surprised many workers was that a single early order completion caught by an auditor could cost the store a whopping 100 points.

According to employees, each Luckin store starts with 100 points, and auditors deduct points based on the relevant violation item after discovering non-compliant operations. If a store's total score is low, the monthly performance bonuses of all staff will be affected. In cases like this where 100 points are deducted at once, not only are individual employees fined, but the store involved must also close for rectification and cannot continue normal operations.

What caught people completely off guard was that a single ordinary early scan could instantly wipe out a store's score, and multiple stores have already received the same inspection report. Now Luckin employees are all on edge. Looking at drinks on the counter that just need a lid before they can be handed over, they still dare not point the receipt QR code at the scanner ahead of time.

While rolling out the new audit policy, Luckin also appropriately relaxed the previously required standard drink preparation time, giving employees more time to handle orders. However, according to employee feedback, in actual practice, after they stopped scanning ahead of time to avoid point deductions, the stores' on-time fulfillment rates still dropped noticeably.

Staff say they usually have to juggle both making drinks and packing orders for handoff at the same time. So after Luckin added audit items for order fulfillment operating standards, workers without three heads and six arms can only choose between "100-point deduction for early order completion" and "failing to meet the on-time rate."

Some, in order to protect their store's 100 points, simply give up on the on-time rate and scan every drink only after the lid is securely on. If superiors ask about the on-time rate, they let the store manager take the heat up front. Others believe the on-time rate matters more and continue the违规 practice of scanning orders as completed ahead of time, but every scan feels like testing the edge of a violation, and they can only silently pray they are not caught on camera.

Still other employees choose to "flip-flop": first they dutifully follow the new rules, but once they notice the on-time rate is too low, they go back to the old practice of early order completion; then when the on-time data is back on target and the store has passed its peak period, they resume standard scanning for order fulfillment.

However, no matter which approach they use to cope with headquarters' new policy, Luckin employees feel physically and mentally exhausted. Many say that in the past, in order to maintain a high on-time fulfillment rate, they could only scramble to make orders once peak hours hit, and the bar often turned into a chaotic battlefield for fear that moving too slowly would make the data look bad.

Now that headquarters has "put shackles" on the operating process and classified early order completion as a serious violation, it undoubtedly makes store fulfillment speed even harder. For understaffed stores, staff are under even greater work pressure. Some sigh, "It's really so cutthroat, they won't let people live," "All tears," "One slip and you're gone."

Luckin workers are raising their hands in mock surrender, joking that they are neither centipedes nor Nezha and cannot both refuse to scan orders as completed ahead of time and keep store fulfillment efficiency extremely fast.

Many people say bluntly that if Luckin, with truth-seeking and pragmatism as its corporate values, truly wants employees to stop violating rules just to manufacture pretty store data, it might as well set its standards closer to the actual order fulfillment situation. That way, staff would not need to scan orders ahead of time to chase the on-time rate, and customers would not complain about stores because they cannot get their orders.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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