Is Luckin Coffee Moving Into Fruit and Vegetable Tea?

Luckin Coffee appears to be preparing a kale-based fruit and vegetable tea, according to questions and ingredient listings employees found in the company's operations system. The app question bank mentioned a "Kale Light-Body Fruit & Veg Tea," covering preparation steps, ingredients, and a launch date, while store material lists added frozen kale juice items. The brand has not confirmed the plan.

The discovery follows a year in which kale drinks became one of the fastest-growing categories in the tea beverage market, with major chains launching their own versions. Luckin's internal notices often reveal upcoming products in advance, which is why staff took the leak seriously. Reactions are mixed: store employees worry about freezer space, and some consumers say the company should focus on its core coffee business and coffee culture before expanding.

Over the past year, fruit-and-vegetable drinks featuring vegetables like kale have sparked a craze in the tea beverage scene, with major brands rushing to follow suit. Recently, Luckin Coffee's internal operations system seems to have revealed similar moves—employees discovered questions and ingredient names related to "Kale Light-Body Fruit & Veg Tea" in the app's question bank and store materials lists, fueling speculation about whether Luckin is crossing over into the fruit-and-vegetable tea track. However, this potential new product plan has not received one-sided anticipation: store employees worry about freezer space running out, while consumers question whether the brand should first do a good job with its core coffee business. This article will sort through the ins and outs of the incident and present multiple voices.

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Over the past year, the hottest category in the tea beverage industry has been fruit-and-vegetable drinks centered on ingredients like kale. Major tea beverage chains have launched distinctive fruit-and-vegetable tea pairings, successfully attracting a large number of customers to try them.

But just recently, Luckin employees, while browsing a recently updated operations notice, accidentally discovered a batch of new questions in the app's question bank related to "Kale Light-Body Fruit & Veg Tea," covering drink preparation steps, ingredients used, and the new product launch date.

Not only that, some store staff also noticed in the internally updated materials in the system backend that the list of newly added store ingredients included items such as "Frozen Kale Composite Fruit & Vegetable Juice Beverage" and "Kale Green Grape Composite Juice."

According to convention, the questions in Luckin's operations notices and internal materials often reveal in advance the brand's product launch plans for the coming weeks. Therefore, when this information related to "Kale Light-Body Fruit & Veg Tea" surfaced, many employees could not help exclaiming: "Is Luckin about to charge into the fruit-and-vegetable tea track?"

Others felt quite troubled upon seeing the newly added materials. Based on Luckin's current menu, the drinks on sale include various flavored coffees as well as fruit teas with multiple concentrated juices added, making the category range already very complex. This also means the number of ingredients that need to be stocked in the refrigerator is enormous.

From the photos of store refrigerators taken by staff, the freezer below the counter, in addition to cold brew coffee liquid, fresh milk, various flavors of rich milk, and colorful concentrated juices, also has to fit baked goods such as bread and desserts, and is almost packed airtight.

So upon hearing that the brand was adding yet another new category, many employees' first reaction was, "The refrigerator really can't fit any more..." They admitted that now, as soon as the refrigerator door is opened, ingredients such as rich milk and fruit juice are crammed together in the limited space, with no extra room at all to place fruit-and-vegetable juice drinks.

Some also suggested that the company should quickly remove some poorly selling products to reduce the burden on store refrigerators and leave more space for new ingredients. However, some staff were glad that Luckin equipped stores with frozen drinks rather than fresh fruits and vegetables, so at least they do not have to squeeze fruit-and-vegetable juice themselves.

In addition to being troubled by the upcoming fruit-and-vegetable tea, netizens who already had intelligence on Luckin's new products were also not very optimistic about the brand's plan to enter the fruit-and-vegetable juice track.

"Luckin, you need to remember you're coffee!" "You might as well just set up a sub-brand to make milk tea." "This is wanting to grab a piece of everything, just not properly researching coffee." "Forget it, Luckin, different trades are like different mountains; just do coffee well." "Frozen lemon was one thing, now here comes frozen fruits and vegetables. Don't be too outrageous—if you can't squeeze in, don't force it." "Why does it have to charge into every track?"

Although the brand has never slowed the pace of new product launches recently, neither the newly launched fruit coffees nor the old products with reformulated recipes won user recognition after launching, and instead drew quite a few negative reviews from customers. Therefore, in most people's view, rather than delving into a new track, the brand should pay attention to consumer feedback and make existing products better match public tastes.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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