China’s fast-growing coffee company Luckin Coffee is expected have more than 4,500 outlets in the country by the end of 2019.
Luckin Coffee chief financial officer Reinout Schakel said that target would make it larger than Starbucks in China, which has in excess of 4,000 coffee shops and an announced goal of 6,000 stores there by 2022.
Luckin Coffee Chief Executive Officer Jenny Zhiya Qian said, “We are very pleased with our results in the third quarter. We exceeded the high-end of our guidance range, achieved a store level profit margin of 12.5% and experienced continuous growth across all key operating metrics.
“These achievements follow a clear trend: an increase in volume, efficiency and, as a result, profitability.”
The company’s CEO said that, during the third quarter, sales from freshly-brewed coffee drinks continued to maintain “very strong growth.”,
“We believe we will reach our goal to become the largest coffee player in China by the end of this year,” she said. “With our value proposition of high quality, high affordability and high convenience we believe that Luckin Coffee has become part of more and more Chinese consumers’ daily lives.
“China’s coffee market remains highly underpenetrated so we are very excited about the growth potential ahead of us,” said Ms Qian. “With our disruptive technology-driven new retail model and our newly-launched retail partnership model, we believe we can rapidly expand into adjacent markets with limited capital expenditure while maintaining a high degree of operational control and efficiency. We are pleased to have taken meaningful steps accomplishing our goals this quarter and remain extremely excited about the future of our business,” Ms Qian concluded.
This article first appeared in www.coffeeandcocoa.net
