Luckin plans to overtake Starbucks in China this year

Expansion plan: A Luckin Coffee store in Beijing. The Chinese coffee startup is targeting a total of more than 4,500 stores by the end of 2019. — Reuters

BEIJING: Chinese coffee startup Luckin is aiming to open 2,500 new stores this year and overtake Starbucks Corp as the largest coffee chain by number of outlets in the world’s second-biggest economy, it said.

The firm, which only officially launched its business at the start of last year, has expanded at breakneck speed, propelled by a focus on technology, delivery, and heavy discounting even at the cost of mounting losses.“What we want at the moment is scale and speed,” Luckin’s chief marketing officer, Yang Fei, told reporters at a presentation here yesterday.