Luckin Coffee After 30,000 Stores: Can Luo Yonghao's Endorsement of Super Large Cup Solve Unit Price Pressure? | Big Fish Finance

Questioning AI · Can the oversized cup strategy optimize profit models amid sluggish same-store growth?

Ten years ago, Luo Yonghao, who once slapped himself for ordering large cups at Starbucks, reenacted that scene in Luckin Coffee’s latest advertisement on March 23.

Today, Luckin Coffee officially announced Luo Yonghao as the “Luckin Oversized Cup Ambassador” and released a collaborative ad recreating a scene from the 2011 microfilm “Little Horse.” This marketing move has garnered widespread attention on social media.

However, considering Luckin’s recent financial performance and product trends, the core focus of this marketing is still on average transaction value. As store numbers surpass 30,000, profit pressure is beginning to surface, and the “oversized cup” has become an important lever for improving per-store profit structure.

From Quiet Testing to Official Promotion: The Pricing Logic Behind Luckin’s “Oversized Cup”

Luo Yonghao’s return is not the starting point of Luckin’s promotion of the “oversized cup.” As early as the end of January this year, Luckin launched an option within its ordering system to upgrade all drinks by +3 yuan for a super large/oversized cup. Unlike the previous attempt limited to American-style coffee, this adjustment covered main categories such as lattes, flavored coffees, and teas, seen industry-wide as Luckin’s effort to maintain the low-price entry point of 9.9 yuan while establishing a price hierarchy upward.

From an industry perspective, Starbucks’ large and oversized cup system is essentially a mature tiered pricing mechanism; Luckin, which previously relied heavily on low-priced bestsellers, is now filling this tier, driven by internal business logic. Meanwhile, main competitors like Cudy Coffee continue to strengthen their low-price positioning, leading to a divergence in strategies.

This transformation does not come without costs. On social media, discussions about whether the cup upgrade involves “adding ingredients” or “diluting with water” became hot topics. Luckin did not adopt a uniform upgrade approach but made formula adjustments for different products: American-style coffee focuses on water addition, lattes on milk, and some flavored coffees on proportional espresso increases.

This product-specific differentiation increases operational complexity at stores and has raised consumer concerns about flavor dilution. From a business perspective, raw material marginal costs are very low, and charging an extra 3 yuan per order, scaled across thousands of stores, can generate significant gross profit increases with minimal additional cost.

Q4 Last Year’s Same-Store Growth Slowed to 1.2%, Delivery Fees Nearly Doubled Year-over-Year

Luckin’s shift toward “oversized cups” is directly related to the operational pressures revealed in its latest financial report. According to the Q4 2025 and full-year financials, the company’s overall scale continues to expand rapidly—total revenue reached 49.288 billion yuan, up 43% year-over-year, with over 31,048 stores. However, as scale grows, key profitability indicators have shown notable fluctuations.

The slowdown in same-store sales growth is a clear signal. The growth rate was maintained between 8% and 14% in the first three quarters of last year but fell to just 1.2% in Q4. This indicates that, as the base expands and market penetration increases, store expansion no longer automatically translates into proportional revenue growth, and natural growth at the store level is under pressure.

Meanwhile, rising fulfillment costs are eroding profit margins. The financial report shows that in Q4 2025, delivery expenses increased by 94.5% year-over-year to 1.64 billion yuan, leading to a decline in GAAP operating profit margin from 10.5% in the same period of 2024 to 6.4%. During the earnings call, CEO Guo Jinyi explicitly stated that the reduction in subsidies on the delivery platform in Q4 last year directly impacted the brand’s reliance on online orders.

This structural contradiction stems from the fact that delivery orders typically have lower transaction values and higher fulfillment costs. As platform subsidies decrease, relying solely on order volume expansion becomes insufficient to offset costs. Guiding consumer shift toward “oversized cups” through product structure not only increases revenue but also allows higher-priced orders to share delivery costs more effectively.

After 30,000 Stores, Scale Expansion Gives Way to Per-Store Efficiency

At the new stage of over 30,000 stores, the core challenge for Luckin has shifted. In recent years, its growth logic was based on dense store opening and low-price penetration. But as marginal returns from new stores diminish, improving efficiency at existing stores is becoming a priority.

Changes in the competitive landscape confirm this judgment. While competitors like Cudy continue fierce low-price competition, Luckin is trying to lead in building a price hierarchy, turning the 9.9 yuan entry into a traffic gateway, and transforming “oversized cups” and add-on options into profit sources. From the system’s silent upgrade in January to Luo Yonghao’s high-profile endorsement in March, this strategic logic has become clear.

In this context, Luo Yonghao’s “face-slapping” return is not just emotional marketing but also a signal of Luckin’s strategic shift. When “9.9 yuan” moves from being a profit engine to a traffic tool, the company’s challenge shifts from “how to sell more” to “how to sell better through structural adjustments.” Fine-tuning the average transaction value will largely determine whether its profit model at the store level can be restored.

As the low-price traffic entry stabilizes, Luckin’s focus has shifted from simply pursuing volume to enhancing per-store profitability through refined structural management.