Why Luckin Coffee Ice Rules Put Baristas in a Bind

Several new Luckin Coffee drinks, including Grape Iced Americano, Light Coffee Lemon Tea, Big Watermelon Coconut Cold Brew, and Preserved Plum Sparkling Americano, are marked on the ordering page as not supporting no ice or less ice. Customers still request less ice in the notes. Staff who follow the standard get bad reviews for ice-heavy cups; staff who remove ice or add extra can draw complaints.

The drinks are built on fixed recipes, and the mini-program temperature options only list iced and hot. That leaves no setting for ice level, even though notes remain available. Employees end up making judgment calls between company standards and customer satisfaction. The dispute also touches the wider americano iced or hot question, since ice volume changes the drink's strength.

Several new products recently launched by Luckin Coffee—including Grape Iced Americano, Light Coffee Lemon Tea, Big Watermelon Coconut Cold Brew, and Preserved Plum Sparkling Americano—are clearly marked on the ordering page as not supporting no ice or less ice. However, many customers are still used to requesting less ice through the notes, and store employees who follow company standards often get bad reviews because of cups filled to the brim with ice; if they secretly fish out the ice or add extra ingredients, they may in turn draw complaints from colleagues at other stores. Employees sigh: the rules say it is not supported, but customers do not buy it, leaving staff caught in the middle. This article sorts out the ins and outs of this ice-amount controversy and also mentions Front Street Coffee's observations on this industry phenomenon.

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"No ice" and "less ice" have long been hotly debated topics in the coffee world. But when it comes to which brand is most often pushed into the spotlight over the ice issue, if Luckin claims second place, probably no one dares claim first. Opening social platforms, posts complaining about Luckin drinks' "shocking amount of ice" can be seen everywhere, and cases of store partners receiving bad reviews because the company explicitly prohibits no ice or less ice are also happening almost every day.

Customers familiar with Luckin's ordering process know that after entering its mini-program, each drink's temperature options are only "iced" and "hot." Once selected, the drink is made according to the default recipe. If customers have special requests about the amount of ice, such as no ice or less ice, in theory they can leave a note when placing the order asking the staff to adjust it.

But recently many users have reported that they still left notes for Luckin staff such as "less ice," "no ice," or even specified the exact number of ice cubes, only to be told upon arrival at the store that this drink can neither be made with less ice nor without ice. In the end, the coffee they received was still a full cup heavy with ice cubes.

In fact, for many products Luckin launched in the past two months, prompts indicating that ice adjustment is not supported have already appeared on the detail pages. These include Grape Iced Americano, Light Coffee Lemon Tea, Big Watermelon Coconut Cold Brew, and Preserved Plum Sparkling Americano. In their detailed descriptions there is a line of small yellow text: "To ensure flavor and mouthfeel, no ice/less ice is not supported. Please understand."

In other words, according to the production standards set by Luckin, when staff make any of the above drinks, in principle they cannot remove ice or reduce ice for customers, nor can they privately alter the recipe. Once caught on camera, at best they lose points and get reprimanded; at worst they may face a fine.

However, many consumers have long developed the "old habit" of noting less ice, and still casually leave a message for staff every time they order a cold drink, requesting no ice or less ice. When the coffee loses the filling of ice and employees cannot adjust flexibly, an underfilled cup is hard to avoid. As a result, a new wave of complaints about "too much ice" has surged again on social platforms.

In response, some employees helplessly said that for all Luckin cold brews, ice-shaken drinks, light coffee series, sparkling series, and Rui Nuo Bing, company rules do not allow no ice or less ice. Moreover, the notice on the detail page is in a very small font, so many customers do not notice it at all and continue to leave notes as usual.

Faced with this situation, staff either explain to customers that it really cannot be done, and if the other party cannot accept it, suggest canceling the order; or they can only risk bad reviews and fish out the ice cubes one by one in front of the customer. However, some employees, in order to reduce store complaints, choose to satisfy customer demands as much as possible and operate as in the past—removing the ice and then quietly topping up the gap with other ingredients.

Yet this non-standard operation to satisfy customers has caused dissatisfaction among partners at other Luckin stores. The reason is that once a customer "gets their wish granted" at a certain store, they will keep ordering that way afterward. When employees at other stores produce according to company standards and say the ice amount cannot be adjusted, they may face threats of bad reviews or even complaints.

Facing this dilemma, employees exclaim: then just stop writing "no ice or less ice not supported," because it leaves staff caught in the middle.

Image source: Xiaohongshu screenshot

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