Tom Luckin Coffee, also touted as the Starbucks of China, entered Singapore in 2022 and today has about 20 outlets islandwide. One of the interesting thing about its operating concept is that all orders are done via its in-house app. This also frees up baristas to really focus on just serving up the drinks. This time, we visited Luckin Coffee at Marina Square and checked out the “Value Proposition” that Luckin Coffee builds itself upon – Quality Convenience and Affordability…
Luckin Coffee Review: Quality Matters
According to Luckin Coffee’s website:
“Our coffee beans come directly from top coffee producing regions, and we have won the gold medal of IIAC for five consecutive years. Every batch of our coffee is carefully blended by our team of the WBC champions. Our coffee is selected from more than 180 blending formulas that highly matches the taste of customers.”
While we were in Luckin Coffee, we saw that Luckin Coffee has managed to attract World Barista Championship winners such as Anthony Douglas and Agnieszka Rojewska on their team to concoct some of the best tasting coffees in the world. Having tried the Iced Minty Coconut Latte which boasts of robust coffee flavours, yet exuding an interesting cooling minty taste, we do see that the quality from Luckin Coffee is really quite good.
Luckin Coffee Review: Convenience via in-house App
In terms of Convenience,
“Our mobile app and presence on other third-party platforms cover the entire customer purchase process, offering our customers a 100% cashier-less environment. This enhances our customer experience, improves our operating efficiency, and allows us to stay connected with our customers and engage with them anytime, anywhere.”
We noticed that once we entered Luckin Coffee, there wasn’t much we could do other than to download its in-house Luckin Coffee application. This is because you cannot order coffee over-the-counter and you can see that the baristas are concentrating on making the coffees. These are actually also good things both for the baristas (being able to focus on one main task of making good coffees) and also great for customers (because everything is done electronically – all you have to do is just order and pick up your drink once it is ready). So yes, Luckin Coffee is really quite convenient with the roll-out of its in-house application.
Luckin Coffee Review: Affordable Coffees
As mentioned at its website in terms of affordability
“We advocate a more convenient and rapid “new retail” experience. Users can purchase, pick up and take out coffee through our mobile app, completely changing the traditional coffee business mode. Experience the ultimate convenience with every cup of coffee carefully crafted and freshly made, just for you.”
One of the first few things that we noticed after downloading the Luckin Coffee app was that our first drink was only at $0.99 – for any coffee. Moreover, if you invite a friend, you’ll also be able to enjoy another $0.99. Furthermore, there are also 50% discount vouchers embedded within the app itself. Hence, these vouchers and promotions do make Luckin Coffee seem relatively affordable.
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All in all, Luckin Coffee does provide a high quality product at relatively affordable prices with ease of convenience for patrons. However, due to the geopolitical situation and economic situation in China, we’re not sure if these good prices would last indefinitely. As with how Flash Coffee also folded in 2023, the coffee scene in Singapore can be quite competitive. Hence, let’s capitalise on these great tasting coffees at affordable prices while we still can! Enjoy!
