What does the Lelecha apology teach s.o.e coffee counters?

A Lelecha store employee told a customer asking about non-dairy creamer that anyone wanting that ingredient should go drink Guming. The reply was posted online, and Lelecha responded with a public apology, a year of free drinks for the customer, and a transfer for the employee involved. The chain also offered 50 percent off dine-in drinks to Guming staff.

Retail observers noted the follow-up because it moved from apology to concrete action quickly. For specialty coffee counters, where staff answer ingredient questions daily, the episode highlights how a single dismissive remark can outweigh careful sourcing and roasting work, and why reply scripts and staff training matter more than slogans.

A storm caused by a cup of milk tea unexpectedly brought a windfall to a competitor. Recently, an employee at a certain Lelecha store, when responding to a customer's inquiry about non-dairy creamer, inadvertently used Goodme as a comparison, which sparked the customer's dissatisfaction and was exposed on social media. Lelecha officially apologized quickly and launched a compensation plan, one item of which offered a 50% discount to Goodme employees, prompting netizens to exclaim that Goodme had "won without doing anything." How did this customer complaint turn into a positive case of brand public relations? From rapid response to substantive compensation, Lelecha's handling won recognition from many consumers and was even praised as "enough for other brands to study for a hundred years." This article will recount the entire incident and analyze the public relations wisdom and industry insights within it.

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Recently, a Lelecha branch posted an apology letter on social media, quickly attracting a large number of netizens to watch and discuss.

The incident began a few days earlier when a customer asked a store employee through a third-party platform whether the drinks contained non-dairy creamer, and received the reply, "If you want to drink something with non-dairy creamer, you can go drink Goodme." The consumer felt that they had only politely inquired about the product ingredients, yet was met with a sarcastic remark from the employee, and angrily said, "I'll blacklist Lelecha forever after this; drinking a milk tea made me furious."

Not long after the complaint post was published, Lelecha's official account appeared in the comments section to apologize and promised the customer a full year of free drinks. At the same time, the official side also issued a formal apology statement, briefly describing the handling details of this customer complaint and saying that the employee involved had been transferred from their original position.

Interestingly, because the employee mentioned Goodme in the conversation with the customer and the remark carried a tone of belittling and stepping on a peer, the store also proposed a compensation plan that surprised onlookers—"For Goodme friends, with a Goodme employee ID, enjoy 50% off dine-in drinks at Lelecha."

This apology statement, sincere in wording and generous in compensation, quickly won the goodwill of many netizens, and many milk tea lovers commented asking to be scolded in the same way—hoping that employees of other chain brands would also snap at them like that, and then the brand would compensate them with a whole year of free drinks.

Some also pointed out that in this customer complaint incident, Goodme only appeared in the conversation between the two parties and was not actually involved in the dispute, yet in the end Goodme employees could enjoy 50% off drinks at Lelecha. They joked that the innocent Goodme employees who were dragged in became the biggest winners of the whole affair, "winning directly without doing anything."

Jokes aside, more netizens noticed that after the consumer posted the complaint on social media, Lelecha responded quickly before public opinion had time to ferment, proactively contacted the customer to admit the mistake, apologize, and propose substantive compensation, thereby obtaining the customer's forgiveness.

Later, after negotiation between the two sides, the store actually did not compensate with 365 cups of drinks, but instead converted it, at the customer's request, into three opportunities for "6 free cups per order via mini-program delivery," winning back the consumer's support for the brand.

As for the peer involved in the conversation, Lelecha did not directly ignore it either, but admitted the mistake and made clear its stance that "belittling and stepping on others is strictly prohibited," and took practical action to bear responsibility for the employee's verbal mistake, leaving onlookers amazed, saying, "This public relations move is enough for other brands to study for a hundred years."

Users following the matter said bluntly that Lelecha's response to and handling of this customer complaint, first, calmed the anger of the poster who had been sarcastically treated by the employee; second, avoided conflict with a peer brand; and also took the opportunity to gain a wave of goodwill from passersby and save its brand image. People could not help but sigh, "What impressive public relations," and joked that Lelecha should "stop making milk tea and go into the entertainment industry as a PR firm—it would definitely have a place."

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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