What happened to Luckin Coffee ordering in Jiaxing?

After Meituan offered free Luckin Coffee redemption vouchers, customers flooded stores with zero-yuan orders. Within about half a day, Luckin stores across the Jiaxing area showed as temporarily closed, delivery channels were largely shut, and pickup counters were stacked with drinks. Riders reportedly switched to three-wheeled flatbed carts to move the volume.

The promotion was part of an intensifying subsidy war among food delivery platforms, which now distribute no-threshold coupons frequently. Staff had no warning before the order surge, and the shutdown highlighted how poorly platform campaigns can sync with store capacity. Coupons many users had already claimed could not be redeemed at closed locations.

The subsidy war among food delivery platforms continues to heat up. After Meituan rolled out free redemption vouchers for Luckin Coffee, a large number of consumers rushed to place orders for "zero-yuan coffee." However, just half a day after the campaign began, Luckin Coffee stores in the Jiaxing area showed they were temporarily closed one after another, and delivery channels were almost entirely shut down. Pickup counters were piled high with drinks, takeout bags occupied the customer area, employees worked nonstop with no time to eat, and delivery riders even switched to three-wheeled flatbed carts to deliver orders. This sudden surge of orders not only exposed the disconnect between the platform and merchants, but also put enormous pressure on store operations and the delivery process.

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The subsidy war among food delivery platforms is intensifying, and consumers can encounter no-threshold discount coupons distributed by major platforms almost every few days. At the same time, store employees responsible for making the drinks are often overwhelmed by a flood of orders without any warning. Early this morning, Meituan launched a new campaign in which participating users could receive a Luckin redemption voucher gifted by the platform, and after placing an order they could drink a free cup of coffee at no cost to themselves.

Coffee that originally cost just a few yuan a cup was already considered a sizable discount, but unexpectedly the platform went straight to "zero-yuan purchase" this time. Many consumers who received free coffee said they could hardly believe it, and they posted their ordering experience from this morning on social media to remind others not to miss this wave of freebies. In a short time, a large number of users quickly opened the mobile app and followed the guides to place an order for "zero-yuan coffee."

But after lunch, netizens began reporting one after another that Luckin stores near them were already showing as closed, and the free redemption vouchers they had worked hard to grab could not be used at all. Later, some people shared screenshots from the delivery platform, saying that across all of Jiaxing, except for transportation hub stores that do not offer delivery service, all other stores had uniformly changed to "temporarily closed." They guessed that the flood of orders triggered by the "zero-yuan purchase" had left stores unable to cope, forcing them to temporarily close their online ordering channels.

The spectacle of stores across the entire city shutting down together left onlookers quite shocked, and they could not help asking customers who had already gotten their coffee whether the rumors circulating online were really that exaggerated.

In response, netizens who went to stores for self-pickup shared on-site photos, saying that the scene they saw after arriving completely exceeded their imagination. The not-so-large pickup counter was covered with cup after cup of freshly made drinks, and the long table in the customer area, the chairs, the delivery shelves, and even the empty floor space were all filled with bag after bag of completed orders.

As for Luckin's employees, from the moment the platform campaign started they were spinning nonstop in the work area like tops, with no time at all to speak to the delivery riders and customers who came to pick up orders. They could only bury themselves in handling the endless stream of receipts coming out of the ticket printer, and some did not even have time to take a sip of water or a bite of food.

Customers who learned about the situation from store employees revealed that after the platform's "zero-yuan coffee" campaign began, some stores received hundreds of orders in a very short time, and some larger stores quickly surpassed the thousand-cup mark.

However, before the campaign launched, the platform side apparently did not notify merchants in advance. Many stores were still operating at their usual pace with only one or two employees on duty, so the existing staffing was simply unable to handle this wave of orders. Managers had no choice but to make emergency calls and summon employees who should have been resting back to the store to work overtime. Even so, many stores said they did not dare reopen their delivery ordering platform today, admitting that the backlog of orders might be impossible to finish.

It is worth mentioning that the ones left frazzled by the huge number of orders brought by this zero-yuan purchase were not only Luckin employees, but also delivery riders. Some customers who went to stores for self-pickup said that because the stores had too many orders waiting for delivery, delivery riders could not arrive at the times shown by the system, and since they were unwilling to wait two or three hours at their workstations, they had no choice but to go downstairs themselves to the pickup area and search for their own cup of coffee.

Some netizens also said that probably because there were simply too many orders requiring delivery, some riders gave up electric bikes that could move nimbly through narrow alleys and switched to three-wheeled flatbed carts to carry the drinks, exclaiming that the scene was extremely striking.

Image source: Internet

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