Is Luckin Coffee's Raw Cheese Latte Good? Luckin x JOJO's Bizarre Adventure Collaboration Breaks Sales Records!

Recently, the co-branded cheese latte between Luckin Coffee and the popular anime "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" has been enthusiastically received since its launch, with single-day sales exceeding 1.31 million cups. Calculated at a unit price of 20 yuan, sales reached over 26 million yuan, setting a new record for first-day sales of a new product.

According to Luckin Coffee's official WeChat, from October 10th to October 16th total sales exceeded 6.59 million cups in just 7 days, with daily cheese consumption extremely high. The cheese latte went through 43 rounds of R&D evaluation to find the perfect golden ratio of cheese aroma, milk fragrance, and coffee flavor. Slightly salty and rich, with a dense, silky texture, those who have tried this cheese latte feel it is destined to become the next out-of-stock hit.

This past April, Luckin's coconut cloud latte, co-branded with the coconut juice brand Yeshu, also gained significant attention, but its first-day sales were only 660,000 cups, roughly half of the JOJO product.

This co-branded product has been widely discussed across social platforms. Searching for "Luckin" on Weibo and Xiaohongshu, ten out of ten results relate to the JOJO co-branded items. What sets Luckin's cheese latte apart from its raw coconut and heavy cream lattes is its "cheese aroma," essentially creating a new coffee flavor using another form of milk.

Furthermore, before the national launch, Luckin was not satisfied with merely creating the product's flavor and texture. It released advance promotions on Weibo long beforehand, hinting at a collaboration with the highly popular anime "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean." This announcement instantly went viral, sparking enthusiastic celebrations among anime fans. As soon as the product launched, many JOJO fans rushed to purchase it, and due to the overwhelming enthusiasm, limited-edition cup sleeves and paper bags quickly ran out of stock.

"JOJO" originated in the 1980s and has become a collaboration partner for various luxury fashion brands thanks to its stylish character designs, having worked with Gucci, Glamb, and Bvlgari. This Luckin collaboration represents a rare recent case of a domestic coffee brand partnering with a well-known anime IP.

The Art of Brand Collaboration

So-called collaboration essentially involves extracting elements from both brands to design new content. This new coffee product directly incorporates animated character images onto co-branded cup sleeves and paper bags, with both parties completing the collaboration in a simple and quick manner. Luckin leverages "JOJO" to connect with younger consumers and boost sales of the new coffee product, while "JOJO" benefits from Luckin's offline and online channels to deepen its IP's influence in the Chinese market.

The co-branded cup sleeves and paper bags feature bold color combinations with fully printed, high-saturation backgrounds. The high-contrast, high-saturation color recognition of "JOJO," combined with Luckin's white industrial-style coffee shops, creates a striking visual effect capable of attracting even coffee customers who are not JOJO fans.

However, some JOJO fans have complained that the cup sleeves and paper bags are "ugly," and quite a few JOJO enthusiasts have created derivative works and shared them on social platforms because they could not bear the design. Others have criticized the collaboration as lacking effort, feeling it merely applied a superficial appearance, with comments like "Is anime fan money really that easy to earn?" In the comment sections of posts about the collaboration, fans' criticisms are frequently visible.

Market Success and Future Prospects

Although it may have "offended" some JOJO fans, the data shows the collaboration was still a massive success. Nothing could stop people from wanting to try a cheese latte, and reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. According to sources, Luckin will launch another new cheese product next week, "Ocean of Orange · Cheese Latte." Orange with cheese? Fruit-flavored cheese? Fruit, cheese, and coffee make a unique creative combination, definitely worth looking forward to.

This collaboration was officially announced in mid-to-late September. Compared with the earlier Yeshu collaboration, which was first discovered by enthusiastic internet users, Luckin built momentum for much longer and was far more high-profile this time. The new product could be described as "popular before launch," breaking two records shortly after the collaboration began. The combination of texture and an anime IP collaboration created this unprecedented blockbuster.

The Growing Trend of Anime Collaborations

Similarly in the anime realm, HeyTea's earlier collaboration with the mobile game "Genshin Impact" saw co-branded products sell out within 1 hour of launch, and the topic also reached the top of trending searches. Recently, Coca-Cola's creative platform "Coca-Cola Creations" announced a limited-edition collaboration with "BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War" called "Soul Blast," the platform's first new product co-branded with an anime IP.

It is clear that, to capture this new generation, the value of anime culture is gradually being discovered by brands and becoming a new way to communicate with young people. For young people, anime culture is not only an identity of its own; it is another world parallel to reality, a popular culture that permeates every corner of their growth. As they age, these young people who grew up watching anime will gradually become a resilient force in society. Everything they persistently love may influence the future direction of brand marketing and market consumption.

Image source: Internet

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

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