A funny thing happened recently on a podcast of an interview between Kai Ryssdal and Jennifer Pak, Marketplace’s China correspondent. They were walking and talking during an interview, and stopped to get coffee. Jennifer Pal mentioned that when Starbucks recently raised their prices all other coffee companies in China raised their prices in lockstep. I thought that was fascinating, and I was reminded of it when I recently read that Luckin Coffee has surpassed Starbucks coffee chains in China with a record 10,829 coffee locations as of June 2023, compared to Starbucks 6,480 locations.
Even though China is typically thought of as a tea drinking country, coffee sales have been taking off in recent years as chains such as Luckin Coffee have continued to expand.
How Luckin Coffee overtook Starbucks as the largest coffee chain in China