It took almost 3 years for Luckin Coffee to complete its almost miraculous comeback. The company, which was once mired in an accounting fraud scandal and survived, told people through the latest financial report data that it is already the largest coffee chain brand in the Chinese market: in 2023, the total sales of Luckin Coffee in the Chinese market will be 248600 million yuan, about 34$500 million, and Starbucks' total sales in the Chinese market are 31$600 million.
It was delisted from NASDAQ in June 2020 and paid 1$800 million to end an accounting fraud lawsuit filed against it by the U.S. ** Exchange Commission, and filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. in 2021 — a time when it was once firmly believed that Luckin would be able to do just a while it didn't immediately end all of its operations.
After several rounds of fierce control battles and the accompanying internal purges, Luckin unexpectedly gradually recovered, with Lu Zhengyao and Qian Zhiya, the main players in the accounting fraud scandal, expelled from the company, and their successor, Guo Jinyi, assumed responsibility for the realization of ZTE.
In December 2021, an earnings report already showed that its revenue in the third quarter of the year was 3US$700 million, a year-on-year increase of 106%. Guo Jinyi expressed cautious optimism at the time, saying, "We are seeing strong performance across the business......Customer retention and order frequency increase, and brand recognition increases."
By the first quarter of 2023, Luckin's operating conditions have shown a clear and irreversible positive development, which is reflected in the data that net income increased by 85% year-on-year to 4.4 billion yuan, with a net profit of 56.5 billion yuan, an increase of nearly 30 times year-on-year. Guo Jinyi still kept a low profile, and there were almost no reports of him being interviewed, and even the entire management team of Luckin Company was silent.
Luckin seems to have fully recovered from the negative effects of the accounting fraud scandal, and no one – both institutions and consumers – would mention or even remember the dark history of the white fawn turning back against a blue background.
In addition to making people forget or ignore the stains of the past, the price that must be paid is greater real success. Lu Zhengyao and Qian Zhiya devised a plan to pull coffee off the altar, and used Starbucks as the main object of "struggle" or "porcelain", although they were later deprived of the management of Luckin, Guo Jinyi was willing to continue the war with Starbucks and this action against coffee disenchantment. 
Luckin has always insisted on not accepting face-to-face orders between customers and store staff, but must transact through a mini program or app, which is considered to make full use of the mobile Internet to provide customers with more convenient services, and has disciplined them as consumers who are accustomed to this order model. Luckin's stores are still simple in decoration and have a small business area, with only a very small number of stores offering a very small number of seats, and some "stores" are actually just stalls. These constitute the low-cost advantage of Luckin Coffee and support it to complete the "original accumulation".
But that wasn't enough to attract more customers, and to achieve this, more coffee products were needed to pique their interest, so coconut water, orange juice and even Moutai were mixed with the liquid extracted from the gold medal coffee beans that Luckin has been flaunting and delivered to consumers. This not only allowed Luckin to continue to be on the hot search list, but also contributed more passenger flow and operating income to it. 
Luckin became a role model to attract more capital and people into the coffee market, with more and more domestic competitors in China, Luckin began to look for opportunities overseas, and the opening of two stores in Singapore in early 2023 is an important step for Luckin to expand into the international market and the starting point of its internationalization strategy, Guo Jinyi said, "By setting up an office in Singapore, Luckin aims to fine-tune our entire IT and operational systems and test our business model in overseas markets. ”
And in Thailand, spontaneous imitators have already appeared. Luckin had to publicly clarify that it did not operate in Thailand and offered a way to distinguish the real one from the fake one — the deer looked in a different direction. Things unexpectedly turned out when the identified counterfeiter accused Luckin of infringement, and after an almost farcical judicial lawsuit, the real Luckin was ordered by a Thai court to pay compensation to the counterfeiter. If this has any positive implications for Luckin, it is that its business model has been recognized by the "international community".
Of course, the fiercest competition in the market is still in China, where there are more and more domestic competitors, and Cudi is one of the ironic ones. Lu Zhengyao and Qian Zhiya were reluctant to withdraw from the coffee market, so they chose to create a new brand, and Cudi's main competitor was Luckin. They are familiar with Luckin's operating model, and they use it on Cudi, and they believe they will be successful as well. Unfortunately, this is not the case, At the end of December 2023, some Cudi associates posted on social ** that Cudi Coffee was "forced to sell alcohol" and "cash flow is tight", etc., and many associates have withdrawn. Cudi's statement is that some stores in colleges and universities are temporarily closed due to winter vacation, and will return to normal after the start of the semester.
*Fighting is one of the ways Luckin competes with Cudi.
In June 2023, the 10,000th store of Luckin opened in Xiamen. During the event, Luckin announced that consumers can enjoy 9$9 for coffee. This is a marketing technique that Cudi has been using since a few months ago.
Guo Jinyi announced Luckin's 99 yuan coffee will last for at least two years, which is seen as a commitment by consumers, so after the Spring Festival holiday in 2024, Luckin 9The news of the "shrinkage" of 9 yuan coffee has become a hot search content again. In fact, Luckin's 99 yuan coffee has never covered all categories, and the existing categories are also changing at any time, and the reality of "shrinkage" is that Luckin's customers are still the most sensitive group.
Luckin, already the largest coffee brand in the Chinese market, will still face more and more complex and fierce market competition in the future, and one of the decisive factors for how long the best coffee will last is how it defines its market position and makes new decisions based on this new perception.