It is learned on February 3 from media outlet Jiemian that according to the statistics of new stores on Luckin Coffee’s WeChat public account, in January 2023, Luckin Coffee added 478 new stores across the country.

Luckin Coffee, which has already ranked first in the number of stores in China’s coffee market, is still opening stores at a rapid pace.

Compared with the speed of adding a total of 485 stores from October to December 2022, in a single month in January this year, Luckin store expansion count has matched that of the previous quarter. Starbucks’ latest quarterly report shows that in the first quarter of fiscal year 2023 (October 2022 to December 2022), it only opened 69 stores in China and entered 10 new cities.

This is related to the change of Luckin Coffee’s store franchise policy. An obvious phenomenon is that the company is gradually lowering the levels of cities that are open to joining.

In low-tier cities, franchisees often need to have certain local advantages such as storefronts and financial strength. They have a higher success rate of joining Luckin, and the profits that Luckin can share also have greater certainty. Some franchisees revealed that the daily average of 100 cups can almost reach the profitability level.