Luckin Coffee Failed but Cheese-Flavored Bubble Teas Are Coming

Luckin Coffee Inc. was the last Chinese consumer brand that took U.S. stock markets by storm. The coffee chain unicorn — not even two years old at the time — went public in New York in May 2019, raising $645 million. It reaped another $778 million from a share and convertible bond sale months later. Luckin’s pitch was seductive. Imagine, a morning cup much cheaper than offered by Starbucks Corp., served to millions of young Chinese on the verge of switching to coffee from the national beverage of tea. Well, that all ended miserably, with Luckin collapsing after admitting to accounting fraud.

But that failure hasn’t stopped businesses from trying to capture the tea drinkers of China. After all, the country does have about 250 million members of Generation Z, on top of another 300 million millennials. With enough venture capital money and marketing, the shopping and consumption habits of young people can be influenced and molded — with the effort turning into great profit, eventually.