Luckin Coffee Opens Second Roasting Factory! Is Luckin's Coffee Consistently Good?

With More Than 7,846 Stores, Luckin Coffee Needs a Bigger Roastery

As Luckin's market footprint expands, the brand has gradually recognized that specialty coffee built around distinctive flavors and refined settings is not the only scenario for domestic coffee consumption. The mass market, which prizes cost-effectiveness and convenience, may be even broader. As a result, Luckin has started pushing into more lower-tier cities in China, steadily rolling out products that answer the public's appetite for novel flavors.

With the marketing team working behind the scenes, viral products that break through the noise have driven Luckin's sales sharply higher, and output at its roasting plant has begun to feel the strain. Relying on a single roastery means that, as Luckin keeps expanding, production efficiency may not be able to keep pace.

So as early as last year, Luckin already had plans for a second coffee roasting factory. After on-site inspections in several cities, the company settled on Kunshan City in Jiangsu Province. In May of this year, Luckin officially signed with the Kunshan Development Zone.

After roughly half a year of process approvals and other procedures, Luckin Coffee's Jiangsu roasting base broke ground in Kunshan just yesterday. Following the commissioning of the Fujian roasting base, this will be the second fully automated intelligent roasting base that Luckin has independently invested in and built, further strengthening the company's upstream supply chain.

A Luckin representative said that once the new roastery is built and commissioned, it will supply the domestic market with more freshly roasted, safe, and clean high-quality green coffee. Over the next one to three years, Luckin aims for global development, a stronger brand strategy, a refined global supply chain, and deeper investment in technology, talent, and digitalization, all in pursuit of building a world-class coffee brand from China.

For Luckin, the second roasting base means fresher, safer, and cleaner high-quality green coffee for the market. For Kunshan, Luckin's roastery will be another major coffee industry project to land in the city after Starbucks' China Coffee Innovation Industrial Park.

Starbucks' China Coffee Innovation Industrial Park was already a major project back in November 2020. According to reports, it carries a total investment of 1.1 billion yuan (156 million US dollars), covers an area of 80,000 square meters, and spans coffee bean import and export, roasting, packaging, storage, logistics distribution, and coffee roasting training. It is Starbucks' largest productive strategic investment outside the United States.

Reports note that Luckin Coffee had already secured its business license earlier. Tianyancha shows that on May 27, 2022, Luckin Coffee Food (Jiangsu) Co., Ltd. was established in Kunshan with a registered capital of 40 million US dollars. The legal representative is Xia Wei, and the company is wholly owned by Luckin Coffee Roasting Factory (Hong Kong) Limited.

Public information shows that Luckin's first roasting factory sits in Pingnan, Fujian, with a total investment of 210 million yuan and an area of 45,000 square meters. It was jointly built by Luckin Coffee and Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC), was officially commissioned on April 18, 2021, and has an annual coffee bean roasting capacity of up to 15,000 tons.

The difference is that the new Kunshan roastery is independently invested by Luckin Coffee itself, with a total investment of 120 million US dollars (approximately 820 million yuan) and an area of 53,000 square meters. It is a full-industry-chain coffee roasting production base integrating green bean sorting, roasting production, warehousing and logistics, and comprehensive R&D. It will also introduce core equipment such as Italy's BRAMBATI roasting system and ICA coffee bean packaging machines, with an annual roasting and processing capacity of 30,000 tons of coffee beans.

According to reports, Luckin Coffee's Jiangsu roasting base is planned to be completed and officially put into production in 2024. By then, Luckin's two roasting bases in Fujian and Jiangsu will form a self-processing roasting supply chain with a combined annual capacity of more than 45,000 tons, delivering higher quality and fresher coffee to 7,846 stores nationwide.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Big roasteries chase consistency through scale, but you can achieve the same steadiness at home by choosing beans with a well-defined roast profile. FrontStreet's Brazil Queen's Farm is a medium roast built for balance: creamy peanut, chocolate, toasted bread, and sugarcane sweetness, clean and gently sweet in the cup, and just as happy in a pour-over, a moka pot, or an espresso machine.

If you prefer your medium roast on the sweeter, fruitier side, FrontStreet's Strawberry Candy Geisha Blend combines a honey-processed Costa Rican coffee with a washed Panamanian Geisha. Roasted to a medium level, it shows both orange-blossom sweetness and a rounded body, and it holds up beautifully as cold brew, pour-over, or espresso.