China’s biggest coffee chain opened its 30,000th store, underscoring Chinese firms’ outsized ambitions both at home and abroad.
Luckin Coffee’s latest outlet, in Shenzhen, is its first to market its worldwide selection of beans, a reflection of its mammoth operations and widening supply chain.
The company has largely outmuscled global behemoth Starbucks in China by slashing prices and offering a menu featuring a huge variety of options to cater to local tastes. Yet as one analyst told the South China Morning Post, China’s consumers exhibit “no real loyalty and could switch quickly.” Perhaps as a result, Luckin has more recently begun to look further afield for growth: It operates more than 100 sites abroad, including in the US.
