Recently, Luckin Coffee launched a new line of bottled ready-to-drink coffee and announced Wang Yibo as the global brand ambassador for its ready-to-enjoy coffee products. The initial launch includes three flavors: Raw Coconut Latte, Classic Americano, and Grapefruit C Americano, with a retail price of approximately 6-7 yuan. Within 24 hours of launch, online channel sales exceeded 1 million bottles, with total category sales reaching 18 million yuan. This is not the first time Luckin Coffee has extended its freshly brewed coffee business beyond physical stores. Luckin Ready-to-Enjoy Coffee is a pre-packaged coffee brand revamped and launched in July 2024, with its product range already covering coffee concentrates, bottled ready-to-drink coffee, instant coffee, coffee beans, capsule coffee, and drip-bag coffee. In 2025, Luckin Ready-to-Enjoy coffee concentrate products sold over 400 million cups annually; revenue from "other products" including coffee concentrates and freeze-dried powder reached 2.32 billion yuan, accounting for 4.7% of total revenue. However, compared to products like coffee concentrates, drip-bags, and capsules, bottled ready-to-drink coffee represents a more significant leap. Bottled ready-to-drink coffee is closer to fast-moving consumer goods in the beverage category, requiring entry into high-frequency channels such as convenience stores, supermarkets, vending machines, and instant retail, competing for shelf space with sugar-free teas, functional beverages, and dairy drinks. Similar moves are not limited to Luckin Coffee. Peet's Coffee Retail General Manager Chen Hao recently stated that over the past three years, the company has focused on its packaged products business as a core strategy, with packaged products now accounting for over 30% of revenue, becoming the second growth curve after offline stores. Manner, Cotti Coffee, and even Lucky Cup have long launched retail products such as freeze-dried and drip-bag coffee; lifestyle-focused specialty coffee brands like Seesaw have even extended their categories to coffee equipment such as pour-over kettles, grinders, and coffee machines. From coffee concentrates to bottled ready-to-drink, from in-store cups to shelf retail, why are freshly brewed coffee brands stepping out of their comfort zones?
A New Price Range Luckin Coffee's high-profile entry into the bottled ready-to-drink market at this time is related to changes within the freshly brewed coffee industry itself. On one hand, store expansion continues, but the efficiency of traditional expansion models in driving growth is declining. By the end of 2025, Luckin Coffee's global store count reached 31,048, with a net increase of 8,708 stores for the year. The average monthly transacting customers for the year increased by 31.1% year-over-year to 94.15 million, with cumulative transacting users exceeding 450 million. However, in the fourth quarter, Luckin Coffee's net profit fell approximately 39% year-over-year to 518 million yuan. Increased delivery costs from rising takeaway orders were a significant factor pressuring profits. Stores and users remain Luckin Coffee's core assets, but as the store network continues to densify, relying solely on new store openings, delivery 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 phase. In February of this year, Cotti Coffee ended its nearly two-year "9.9 Yuan All-You-Can-Drink" promotion, retaining unlimited supply for only some products at 9.9 yuan, while other non-special offer products are sold at retail price. This change is seen as one sign of cooling low-price competition in the industry. However, the receding price war does not mean the demand cultivated by low-price coffee will disappear. Over the past few years, low-price subsidies and instant delivery have objectively increased coffee consumption frequency. When drinking one or even multiple cups daily becomes a habit, coffee consumption inevitably spills over from the store environment into home, office, commute, and business travel scenarios. The price war has also amplified the functional consumption attribute of coffee to some extent. For some consumers, coffee is no longer just about spatial consumption or social consumption; it is increasingly becoming a high-frequency, low-decision caffeine supplement. Luckin Coffee's current bottled ready-to-drink coffee retails for approximately 6-7 yuan, close to the mass-market price range of Mixue Bingcheng products and convenience store beverage shelves, continuing its strategy of entering markets with mass-market pricing, as seen in the freshly brewed coffee market. This pricing has two implications. For in-store coffee, the industry is attempting to break free from excessive low-price competition and re-establish a wider price range for freshly made beverages. For consumers who have already formed a high-frequency drinking habit, demand for low-threshold, high-convenience coffee still exists. Ready-to-drink coffee caters precisely to this cost-effective demand. Luckin Coffee's choice of Raw Coconut Latte, Classic Americano, and Grapefruit C Americano flavors aligns with this logic. These products correspond to flavors already well-established and recognized in stores. Using proven bestsellers to enter the shelf market can reduce consumer decision-making costs and shorten the education cycle for new products. In fact, Luckin Coffee has already developed a more segmented retail price range around its signature "Raw Coconut Latte." Currently, Luckin Ready-to-Enjoy Coffee has launched three products: Raw Coconut Flavored Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate, bottled ready-to-drink coffee, and Luckin Raw Coconut Milk as a coffee companion. On the Luckin Ready-to-Enjoy member center mini-program, two boxes of 25ml bagged Raw Coconut Flavored Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate (18 servings total) are priced at 89 yuan, making each serving close to 5 yuan; in some bulk snack channels, the price for similar coffee concentrate can drop to 3 yuan per serving.
On the Shelf The ready-to-drink coffee market itself is not one that experiences easy growth. Euromonitor International data shows that China's ready-to-drink coffee market size has exceeded 10 billion yuan, but the compound annual growth rate from 2023 to 2025 was only 0.4%, significantly lower than the freshly made coffee market in the same period. Historically, this market has been dominated by traditional FMCG brands and established coffee brands. Nestlé has long held a leading position, with Starbucks, Costa, Suntory, and others competing in different price ranges and channels. In recent years, traditional beverage players like Nongfu Spring's Carbon Engineer and Dongpeng's Big Boss have also entered the coffee-related product space. In contrast, Luckin Coffee and Cotti Coffee, which have dominated the freshly made beverage market in recent years, have had little presence on store shelves. The logic of shelf competition differs from that of freshly made tea and coffee stores. The freshly made store business relies on location, fulfillment, new product launches, and member operations; bottled beverages rely on distribution coverage, shelf placement, channel margins, inventory turnover, and repeat purchases at the point of sale. When consumers make choices in front of a convenience store shelf, the decision-making process is shorter, and substitutes are more abundant. For bottled beverages, whether channels are willing to consistently distribute, restock, and invest in display resources often determines a product's lifecycle more than its initial sales. This brings heavier channel costs, higher distribution challenges, and profits divided among multiple channel levels. For newcomers, challenging the entrenched channel interest networks of giants often requires paying a higher "entry fee." For example, one of Genki Forest's core weapons in breaking through the shelf and cooler封锁 of traditional beverage giants early on was offering higher channel profit sharing, coupled with building its own coolers to strengthen end-point reach. Dongpeng Beverages' journey from a regional to a national brand also long relied on digital marketing methods like "One Yuan Fun" and "Scan Code for Red Envelope," converting expenses into incentives for small terminal stores and consumers. Consequently, tea beverage brands that attempted retailization earlier have almost all abandoned nationwide distribution. After Nayuki Tea restarted its bottled beverage strategy in the second half of 2025, it emphasized customized co-branding and exclusive supply for membership store channels like Sam's Club; Heytea also launched bottled products like Salted Cheese Tibetan Tea and Apple Jasmine Milk through channels like Sam's Club and Pang Donglai, targeting specific channel demographics to improve conversion efficiency. According to reports, Luckin Coffee's 300ml bottled Americano has a wholesale price to distributors of about 4 yuan per bottle, which distributors sell to stores for about 4.6 yuan per bottle, with a terminal selling price no lower than 6 yuan per bottle. After adding rebates and promotions, distributor毛利 per case is about 15 yuan; after deducting warehousing, logistics, and labor costs, the profit margin is approximately 10%. In comparison, Starbucks' 270ml bottled Americano has a distributor wholesale price of about 5.2 yuan per bottle, sold to stores for about 7.2 yuan per bottle, with a terminal price of about 10 yuan per bottle; distributor毛利 per case is about 30 yuan, nearly double that of Luckin Coffee. However, compared to traditional ready-to-drink coffee brands, Luckin Coffee's advantages still lie in higher-frequency store reach, faster new product iteration, and the youthful flavor perception built around bestsellers like Raw Coconut Latte. Furthermore, its mass-market pricing is closer to the high-frequency consumer base educated by low-priced freshly brewed coffee in recent years and helps Luckin Coffee enter currently popular price-sensitive channels like bulk snack stores and instant retail. The true test of Luckin Coffee's retail venture will be whether it can translate the bestselling recognition formed at the store level into sustained sales momentum on the shelf.
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