How Do Delivery Subsidies Change Work Inside Luckin Coffee Stores?

Heavy delivery-platform subsidies have driven bulk orders of milk tea, coffee, and baked goods, and Luckin Coffee stores are absorbing the fallout. Staff report that nightly thawing of light food, once about ten minutes of work, now takes more than half an hour. The company also ended the performance commission on light food sales while requiring thawing to follow procedure after closing, pushing many employees into unpaid overtime.

The light food line covers bagels, bread, daifuku, and other items. When expiration labels print, staff search the warehouse for each product, check it for damage, and move it through the thawing steps. Online observers assumed the task was simple, but employees describe a long, label-by-label routine that grows with every discounted bulk order placed in a coffee store.

Recently, major food delivery platforms have rolled out aggressive subsidy promotions, giving consumers some very real savings. Many people took advantage of the low prices to stock up on milk tea, coffee, and light bakery items. However, this seemingly win-win promotional frenzy has stirred up quite a commotion inside Luckin Coffee stores. A flood of consumers rushed into stores to buy light food in bulk, directly causing the number of baked goods that staff need to thaw each night to skyrocket. What used to take just over ten minutes now takes more than half an hour. What leaves employees even more frustrated is that the company not only canceled the performance commission on light food sales, but also requires them to complete the thawing tasks strictly according to procedure after closing, forcing many into unpaid overtime. The cost of this delivery war seems to be quietly borne by frontline staff.

▲

Click to follow | Daily specialty coffee culture magazine Coffee Workshop

Recently, several mainstream food delivery platforms have successively launched heavy discount subsidies, and consumers have benefited considerably. Open the fridge and it's stuffed with milk tea, coffee, and bread—just take out one or two items each day to thaw and heat up, and breakfast is easily sorted.

But consumers' practice of buying Luckin light food in large quantities thanks to platform discounts has left Luckin store employees feeling quite troubled. They can only hope this round of promotions ends soon.

Faced with the complaints of Luckin employees, many onlooking netizens expressed confusion. In their eyes, compared with making drinks, moving baked goods from the freezer to the refrigerator isn't much of a challenge—some even think the job should be pretty easy, and can't understand why Luckin staff look so miserable the moment they see that long string of expiration labels.

Seeing netizens' doubts, a Luckin employee immediately listed several key points to explain in detail that this thawing work is far from as easy as imagined.

According to this employee, Luckin's light food product line is quite extensive, covering bagels, bread, daifuku, and many other categories. When the receipt printer spits out expiration labels, staff first need to go to the warehouse to search for the corresponding products, take them out one by one to check for damage and whether the food inside the packaging looks subpar. After confirming everything is fine, they stick the labels in designated spots on the outer packaging, arrange all the products on the counter for photos as a record, and finally stack them neatly into the refrigerator.

On the surface this process doesn't seem complicated, but Luckin employees say they must wait until the store closes before they can start. After hauling out the products the system has calculated need thawing from the warehouse, they still have to strictly abide by the hard rule that "light food must not be out of the fridge for more than 15 minutes," completing the full set of actions—inspecting, labeling, photographing, organizing—in an extremely short time, and only after finishing one batch can they fetch the next.

Many employees report that previously a store only needed to thaw about a dozen light food items a day, so this task wasn't too troublesome for them. However, ever since delivery competition entered a white-hot stage and Luckin launched its 1-yuan bagel promotion, large numbers of consumers began buying light food in bulk, and the number of light food items a store needs to thaw each night suddenly soared to dozens or even over a hundred, multiplying the workload.

This also means work that used to be done in just over ten minutes now takes staff more than half an hour to complete. Many helplessly say that after going through the entire thawing process per company rules, they can hardly clock off on time and are forced into unpaid overtime.

What makes things even worse for employees is that, they reveal, stores used to pay staff performance commission when light food sales reached a certain volume. But as light food sales surged, the company directly abolished the commission system. With no overtime pay and no performance commission either, under this double blow, night-shift employees grow increasingly resistant to the post-closing thawing work.

"I clocked overtime but it doesn't count toward work hours," "It wasn't this bad before, now it keeps getting later," "I really hate thawing light food," "Who on earth is eating all this!!! Labeling over 50 every day! Takes half an hour just to label," "Can't leave the store before 11:30," "Working overtime every day makes me want to quit."

Many say that although thawing work isn't as tedious as brewing tea or making cold brew, it eats up a huge amount of off-duty time, forcing workers into unpaid overtime just to finish the task. So much so that the moment they see the receipt printer spit out a long string of expiration labels, their vision goes black, and they sigh that "Luckin's beasts of burden are the real victims of the delivery war."

Image source: Xiaohongshu

Disclaimer: Some images in this article are from the internet. For some content on the website, such as images, we will respect the original author's copyright and note the source. However, due to the sheer volume, a few images and texts may not have been credited in time; please forgive us. If the original author has any dispute, they may contact the website and we will handle it. Once verified, we will correct it immediately. Compiled and edited by "Coffee Workshop." Please indicate the source when reposting. If there is any infringement, please inform us for removal. Thank you~!

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