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Luckin Coffee, known for its small stores and low-cost beverages, is branching out. The company opened a gigantic, two-story flagship store in Shenzhen, China, on Feb. 9.
As Evelyn Cheng reports for CNBC, the 4,521-square-foot shop is Luckin’s first premium store, emphasizing higher-end pour-over coffees and specialty drinks. Customers say they’ve waited in line up to three hours since the store’s soft launch in late January.
Luckin describes the new store, its 30,000th, as offering “an immersive experience of the brand’s global supply chain value narrative and quality commitment, illustrated by the store design and exclusive premium menu.” Cheng compared it to Starbucks’ premium Reserve locations, one of which it opened in Shanghai in 2017.
News reports noted the store’s resemblance to Starbucks’ Reserve concept. Mark Faithfull in Forbes wrote that the Shanghai Reserve store helped to “define the idea of coffee as a premium experience in China,” and called Luckin’s flagship “a direct swipe at Starbucks’ premium ambitions.”
While Luckin opens its first high-end store, Starbucks has gone in the opposite direction, closing its two Reserve locations in Seattle in September 2025. According to the company, the move was part of a wider restructuring initiative that involved closing 600 stores across the U.S. Workers at both locations were unionized. However, Starbucks said that wasn’t part of its rationale for closing the stores.
Read the full story on Luckin’s flagship store from CNBC here.
