What Do Lavazza's Changsha Closures Say About Coffee Culture?

Lavazza is closing its remaining Changsha stores: the Wankuntu location after business on January 8, 2026, and the Kaide Yi store on January 9, 2026, with local reports saying the brand will exit the city. The Italian roaster entered Changsha in late 2021 and at one point ran five downtown shops. The first one shut in December 2022, and the Xingcheng Tiandi store closed in March 2025.

For the coffee enthusiast in China, the retreat points to how quickly local coffee culture has changed. Lavazza opened at Orange Isle Park in late 2021 and drew crowds, yet foot traffic alone did not sustain the stores. Customers can refund stored-value balances through the brand's official mini-program, and longtime regulars are split between regret and seeing the move as a routine business adjustment.

Recently, multiple Changsha consumers have posted on social media that Lavazza's Wankuntu store and Kaide Yi store in Changsha will cease operations on January 8 and 9, 2026, respectively, and local users have revealed that the brand will completely withdraw from the Changsha market soon after. This century-old Italian coffee brand, once known as the "godfather of Italian coffee," opened its first store in Central China at Orange Isle Park in late 2021, enjoying a moment of great popularity, and subsequently opened 5 stores in downtown Changsha. However, the first store quietly closed just one year after opening, and the Xingcheng Tiandi store also closed at the end of March 2025. Now the remaining stores have also been reported with confirmed closure news. Longtime customers have mixed views on the brand's operational capabilities, product value for money, and market prospects—some express regret, while others believe the layout adjustment is a normal business decision.

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Recently, multiple Changsha netizens have posted on social media that Lavazza's Changsha Wankuntu store will permanently close after business hours on January 8, 2026. From pictures shared by netizens, the store has posted a closure notice and reminded consumers that they can process refunds of their stored-value balances through the official mini-program.

Meanwhile, in other posts, local netizens revealed that Lavazza's Changsha Kaide Yi store will also cease operations on January 9, 2026, and said the brand will subsequently completely withdraw from the Changsha market. Faced with this sudden closure news, many longtime customers said it was hard to accept. However, after calming down, some also admitted that although they feel regret and lament over Lavazza leaving Changsha, it is not entirely incomprehensible.

It is understood that this century-old Italian coffee brand, Lavazza, hailed as the "godfather of Italian coffee," opened its first store at Changsha Orange Isle Park in late 2021, which was also the brand's first store in Central China. After this coffee shop, which incorporated local characteristics, opened, it attracted a large number of coffee enthusiasts to visit and check in, and the brand subsequently opened 5 stores in downtown Changsha.

However, public information shows that just one year after opening, Lavazza's first Changsha store quietly closed in December 2022; the Xingcheng Tiandi store ceased operations at the end of March 2025. Now that the Wankuntu store and Kaide Yi store have successively been reported with confirmed closure information, and local users say the remaining two stores will close by the end of this month, this means that after January this year, Lavazza's striking blue-and-white signage will no longer be seen in downtown Changsha.

In the eyes of regular customers who have frequented the stores for a long time, the mid-to-high-end positioned Lavazza is not inferior to competitors such as Starbucks and Peet's in terms of product quality and store service, but its brand operation capability is clearly inferior to its peers, resulting in local consumers knowing very little about this century-old coffee brand. Some people even only learned after hearing the closure news that Lavazza had once had several stores in Changsha.

Longtime users said that although Lavazza's Changsha stores could attract some residents to visit and check in during the initial opening period, once the novelty wore off, the stores appeared deserted, and it was rare to see a full house on ordinary days. Therefore, in their view, it is entirely understandable that the brand chose to close stores to cut losses because store profitability was not as good as expected.

Netizens following the matter have pointed out bluntly that in terms of brand awareness, Lavazza is less well known to the public than Starbucks, Peet's, and Blue Bottle Coffee; in terms of product value for money, Lavazza is also inferior to Luckin, Cotti, and Manner. Now with successive news of store closures, some fans admit that Lavazza now gives people a "barely alive feeling," and they are very worried about the brand's development in the Chinese market.

However, optimists believe that although Lavazza's situation seems less than optimistic, judging from the frequency of new product releases on its official WeChat account and the occasional news of new store openings on social media, there should not be any major problem with the brand's operations, and the public need not worry unnecessarily about the brand adjusting its market layout.

Image source: Internet

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