Luckin's Former CEO Takes Over Cotti Coffee! Is a Second Luckin Coffee Coming?!

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account: cafe_style)

For more specialty coffee beans, please add the private WeChat of FrontStreet Coffee, WeChat ID: qjcoffeex

Tianyancha data shows that recently, the legal representative of Cotti Coffee (Tianjin) Co., Ltd. has changed. Wang Baiyin, the Peking University classmate of Lu Zhengyao, the former chairman of Luckin Coffee, has withdrawn, and has been replaced by Qian Zhiya, Lu Zhengyao's "protégé" and former CEO of Luckin Coffee, who now serves as the legal representative.

According to public information, Cotti Coffee (Tianjin) Co., Ltd. was established in May 2022 with a registered capital of 100 million US dollars. Its business scope includes catering services, food sales, internet food sales, etc., and is wholly owned by MAIN MARVEL LIMITED. It is worth noting that in addition to serving as the legal representative of Cotti Coffee, Qian Zhiya also holds the positions of executive director and manager in the company.

Qian Zhiya was born in 1976 and graduated from Wuhan Textile University in 1998. She holds an EMBA degree from Peking University. She previously served as director, vice president, and operations director of Shenwu Group; executive vice president of Car Rental Co., Ltd.; and CEO of Luckin Coffee.

Lu Zhengyao and Qian Zhiya have always been seen as having a "mentor-protégé" relationship by outsiders. When Qian Zhiya first came to Beijing from Wuhan in 2004, she met Lu Zhengyao. After that, she followed him to start businesses, doing odd jobs at first, until later they established "CAR Inc." Lu Zhengyao also recognized Qian Zhiya's work ability, so he appointed her as executive vice president and operations director of CAR Inc.

Her career can be said to have been smooth sailing. At that time, she managed more than 1,000 stores nationwide, 100,000 operating vehicles, and 40,000 employees. Every strategic plan and cooperation of the company was her responsibility.

In November 2017, Qian Zhiya officially resigned from her former employer for personal reasons. At that time, she was already 41 years old, originally at the prime of her career. After leaving CAR Inc., where she had worked for 13 years, she chose to start from scratch, venturing into the coffee business, and established Luckin Coffee. The first Luckin store had already opened in Galaxy SOHO one month before Qian Zhiya officially resigned.

During the initial establishment of Luckin by Qian Zhiya, half of the funding came from the support of Shenwu Group. At that time, lacking funds and customers, Lu Zhengyao allocated a portion of the headquarters location of Shenwu Group and rented it to Luckin Coffee for office space. From Lu Zhengyao's actions, it was clear that he was very supportive of Qian Zhiya's entrepreneurial decision, which shows that Lu Zhengyao indeed provided great help to Qian Zhiya. After Luckin was established, Lu Zhengyao was not only the chairman but also the company's largest angel investor. Their equity ratios were similar.

On May 17, 2019, Luckin Coffee was officially listed on the NASDAQ in the United States. While others took more than twenty years to go public, Luckin Coffee set a global market record by going public in just one year. In the short 18 months before its IPO, Luckin underwent four rounds of financing, with the first three rounds being arranged by acquaintances such as Li Hui and Liu Erhai. According to media reports, Qian Zhiya once publicly stated that Luckin was not short of money.

Until April 2020, Luckin Coffee "self-exposed" financial fraud. Two months before the "self-exposure," the short-selling机构 Muddy Waters had publicly released an anonymous short-selling report accusing Luckin Coffee of alleged financial fraud. Store sales, product prices, advertising expenses, and net income from other products were all exaggerated. In the third quarter of 2019, Luckin's store operating profit was exaggerated by 397 million yuan. Afterward, Luckin immediately experienced stock price declines, regulatory investigations, and collective lawsuits from investors seeking compensation.

In addition, it was required to delist from NASDAQ, and trading would continue to be suspended until it fully meets NASDAQ's requirements for supplementary information. Qian Zhiya did not speak out during this turmoil. Perhaps she also realized her mistake, so she resigned from her position at Luckin in June 2020.

Meanwhile, Lu Zhengyao, also a founder, after being "kicked out" of Luckin Coffee due to involvement in financial fraud, has never stopped his entrepreneurial pace. His earliest entrepreneurial project was shared space, followed by Qu Xiaomian, Shetan Yingxiong, and now Cotti Coffee. After two years, the two "mentor and protégé" have returned together, "returning to" the coffee field together. However, facing an increasingly fierce competitive environment, whether Cotti Coffee can replicate Luckin's success remains to be tested by time.

Image source: Internet

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473