From freshly brewed to ready-to-drink, why are chains like Luckin stepping out of their in-store comfort zones?

Recently, Luckin Ready-to-Drink Coffee launched a brand new bottled ready-to-drink coffee and officially announced Wang Yibo as the global brand ambassador for Luckin Ready-to-Drink Coffee.

The first batch of products released includes three flavors: Coconut Latte, Classic Americano, and Grapefruit C Americano, with a retail price of about 6–7 yuan. Within 24 hours of launch, online sales exceeded one million bottles, with total sales across all categories reaching 18 million yuan.

This is not the first time Luckin has extended its fresh brewed coffee business beyond its stores.

Luckin Ready-to-Drink Coffee is a pre-packaged coffee brand newly launched in July 2024, whose products already cover categories such as coffee liquid, bottled ready-to-drink coffee, instant coffee, coffee beans, capsule coffee, and drip bag coffee.

In 2025, Luckin's ready-to-drink coffee liquid products sold more than 400 million cups throughout the year; “Other products” including coffee liquid, freeze-dried powder, etc., generated annual sales revenue of 2.32 billion yuan, accounting for 4.7% of total revenue.

Compared with coffee liquid, drip bag, capsule, etc., bottled ready-to-drink is a much bigger leap.

Bottled ready-to-drink coffee is closer to fast-moving beverage products and needs to enter high-frequency channels like convenience stores, supermarkets, vending machines, and on-demand retail, competing for shelf space with sugar-free tea, functional beverages, and dairy drinks.

Similar moves are not limited to Luckin.

Peiye Coffee’s Retail GM Chen Hao recently stated that in the past three years, the company has focused on packaged product business as its core strategy and now revenue from packaged products has broken 30%, becoming the second growth curve after offline stores.

Brands like Manner, Cudi, and even Lucky Coffee have long launched freeze-dried and drip bag retail products; specialty coffee brands emphasizing lifestyle, like Seesaw, have extended their categories to coffee tools like pour-over pots, grinders, and coffee machines.

From coffee liquid to bottled ready-to-drink, from store cup sales to shelf retail, why do fresh brewed coffee brands want to step out of their comfort zone?

A New Price Range

Luckin’s high-profile entry into bottled ready-to-drink coffee at this time is related to current changes in the fresh brewed coffee industry itself.

On the one hand, store expansion continues, but the efficiency of traditional expansion models in driving growth is declining.

By the end of 2025, Luckin’s total global store count reached 31,048, with a net increase of 8,708 stores throughout the year. Average monthly transaction customers grew 31.1% year-on-year to 94.15 million, with cumulative transaction users surpassing 450 million.

But in the fourth quarter, Luckin’s net profit fell approximately 39% year-on-year to 518 million yuan. Rising delivery costs from increased takeout orders became one of the main pressures on profit.

Stores and users are still Luckin’s core assets, but as the store network becomes increasingly dense, continuing to rely on new store openings, takeout fulfillment, and low-price subsidies to drive growth will see diminishing marginal returns.

On the other hand, the coffee price war is entering a new stage.

In February this year, Cudi ended its nearly two-year “9.9 yuan unlimited drinks” campaign, retaining only some products at unlimited supply at 9.9 yuan, while other non-special products are sold at retail price. This change is seen as a sign of cooling in the industry’s low-price competition.

The fading price war does not mean demand built by low-priced coffee will disappear.

In the past few years, low-price subsidies and instant fulfillment objectively increased the frequency of coffee consumption.

When one or more cups per day became a habit, coffee consumption was bound to spill out of store scenarios to home, office, commuting, and travel.

The price war has also amplified coffee’s functional consumption attribute. For some consumers, coffee is no longer just spatial or social consumption; it’s increasingly a high-frequency, low-decision caffeine supplement.

Luckin’s bottled ready-to-drink coffee this time retails at about 6–7 yuan, similar to Mixue Bingcheng’s products and the mass-market pricing seen on convenience store beverage shelves, and continues its approach in fresh brewed coffee of breaking into the market with mass pricing.

This pricing has two meanings.

For store coffee, the industry is trying to shake off excessive price competition and expand the price range for freshly made beverages;

For consumers who already have high-frequency drinking habits, the demand for low-threshold, high-convenience coffee still exists. Ready-to-drink coffee meets this value-conscious demand.

Luckin’s choice of coconut latte, classic americano, and grapefruit C americano flavors fits this logic.

These products correspond to flavors with high awareness in Luckin stores. Using mature blockbuster products to enter shelf markets can reduce consumer decision-making costs and shorten the cycle for new product education.

In fact, Luckin has long divided the retail price range more finely around its signature “coconut latte” product.

Currently, Luckin Ready-to-Drink Coffee has launched three coconut flavor products: cold brew coffee liquid, bottled ready-to-drink coffee, and Luckin coconut milk as a coffee companion.

In Luckin Ready-to-Drink Coffee's member center mini-program, two boxes (18 cups) of 25ml coconut flavor cold brew coffee liquid are priced at 89 yuan, almost 5 yuan per cup; in some bulk snack channels, similar coffee liquid prices can drop to 3 yuan.

On the Shelf

Ready-to-drink coffee itself is not an easy market for rapid growth.

Euromonitor International data shows China’s ready-to-drink coffee market has exceeded 10 billion yuan, but its compound annual growth rate from 2023 to 2025 is only 0.4%, clearly lower than the fresh brewed coffee market in the same period.

Previously, this market was mainly dominated by traditional fast-moving consumer brands and mature coffee brands.

Nestlé has long held a strong position, Starbucks, Costa, Suntory, etc., also compete in different price ranges and channels. In recent years, traditional beverage players like Nongfu Spring’s carbon coffee, Dongpeng Daka, etc., have started to layout coffee-related products.

Recently, the strong performers in the fresh-made beverage market like Luckin and Cudi have had few appearances on the shelf.

The logic of shelf competition is different from that of fresh-made tea and coffee stores.

Fresh-made store business relies on location, fulfillment, new launches, and membership operation; bottled drinks depend on coverage rate, shelf position, channel profits, inventory turnover, and terminal repurchase. Consumers make decisions faster at convenience store shelves and have more alternatives.

For bottled drinks, whether channels are willing to continuously stock, restock, and devote display resources often matters more than initial sales for the product lifecycle.

This brings heavier channel costs, higher stocking difficulty, and profit margins divided by multiple channel layers.

For newcomers, challenging the entrenched channel interest network of giants often requires paying a higher “entry fee.”

For example, Yuanqi Forest broke the shelf and fridge blockade of traditional beverage giants early on, using a higher channel margin as a key strategy and reinforced terminal reach by building its own fridges.

Dongpeng Beverage expanded from regional brand to nationwide, relying for a long time on digital marketing like “1 yuan enjoyment,” “scan to get a red envelope,” converting costs into incentives for terminal small stores and consumers.

Because of this, tea drink brands that tried retail earlier have almost all abandoned full-channel distribution.

Naixue relaunched its bottled beverage strategy in the second half of 2025, now emphasizing custom co-branding and exclusive supply in member stores like Sam’s; Hey Tea also relies on channels like Sam’s and Pangdonglai to launch bottled products like Salty Cheese Tibetan Tea and Apple Milk Jasmine, targeting specific channel audiences for higher conversion efficiency.

According to LatePost, Luckin’s 300ml bottled Americano wholesale price is about 4 yuan/bottle, dealers sell to stores for about 4.6 yuan/bottle, and terminal price is not less than 6 yuan/bottle. Factoring in rebates and promotions, dealers’ gross profit is about 15 yuan per box, with a profit margin of about 10% after deducting warehousing, logistics, and labor.

By comparison, Starbucks' 270ml bottled Americano’s wholesale price for dealers is about 5.2 yuan/bottle, sold to stores for about 7.2 yuan/bottle, terminal price is about 10 yuan/bottle; dealers’ gross profit per box is about 30 yuan, nearly double Luckin's gross profit margin.

However, compared to traditional ready-to-drink coffee brands, Luckin’s advantages still lie in higher frequency store reach, faster new product iteration, and a young taste mindset built around blockbusters like coconut latte.

Moreover, mass pricing is more closely aligned with the high-frequency consumer groups educated by low-priced fresh brewed coffee over the past few years and helps Luckin break into price-sensitive channels like bulk snacks and on-demand retail currently with high momentum.

Whether Luckin can turn the blockbuster awareness built in stores into sustained sales on the shelf will determine the real quality of this retail attempt.

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