Luckin Coffee Brand Guidelines: An App-Order Chain From 2017, a 2020 Delisting & a Rebuild

A trial shop in a Beijing office complex.

Luckin Coffee, written 瑞幸咖啡 (Ruìxìng Kāfēi) in Chinese, was incorporated in October 2017, English Wikipedia says. Chinese Wikipedia dates the trial opening of its first shop to 28 October 2017, inside the Galaxy SOHO office complex in central Beijing, and says the chain held a formal launch event on 8 May 2018 at the China National Convention Center, by which time it already had 525 shops. English Wikipedia adds that its first shops in Beijing and Shanghai were open by January 2018.

The model was built around a phone rather than a till. English Wikipedia says purchases can only be made through the company’s app, and that its shops, stores and kiosks sell coffee, tea and food. Restaurant Business, reporting in June 2025, described the business as mostly focused on takeout and mobile ordering, and noted that customers in Asia cannot order at the counter. Chinese Wikipedia describes the early marketing as a run of app coupons, such as a free first cup for new customers, aimed largely at office workers.

The company is registered in the Cayman Islands and has its headquarters in Xiamen, in Fujian province, according to Chinese Wikipedia; English Wikipedia also places the head office in Xiamen. Chinese Wikipedia records that a tea line, “Xiaolu Tea,” was launched in 2019, run for a time as a separate brand, and folded back into Luckin in August 2021.

A listing, a case and a restructuring.

Luckin listed on the Nasdaq exchange in New York on 17 May 2019, Chinese Wikipedia says, about nineteen months after its first shop opened. In January 2020 a short-seller’s report alleged that its figures were inflated, which the company denied, English Wikipedia says. On 2 April 2020 the company itself announced that an internal investigation had found its 2019 sales had been fabricated. Its shares were halted, it received a delisting notice in May, and trading on Nasdaq was suspended on 29 June 2020, after which the shares moved to over-the-counter trading, Daily Coffee News reported in June 2026. In September 2020 China’s market regulator fined a group of companies including Luckin over the falsified figures, English and Chinese Wikipedia say.

On 16 December 2020 the US Securities and Exchange Commission announced a settlement with the company. Accounting Today reported that day that the SEC complaint alleged the company had materially overstated its revenue and expenses and understated its net loss in 2019, that the misconduct had been discovered during the annual audit, and that Luckin had reported it, begun an internal investigation and added internal accounting controls. The company neither admitted nor denied the allegations.

In February 2021 Luckin filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy recognition in New York; in September 2021 it settled a US class action brought by investors; and in December 2021 a court approved the restructuring of its debt, English Wikipedia says. In January 2022, Chinese Wikipedia says, a consortium led by the private equity firm Centurium Capital completed the purchase of the shares held by the former chairman and his management team, giving it more than half of the voting rights. The company left the bankruptcy process in 2022: Chinese Wikipedia gives 11 April 2022, while English Wikipedia, citing The Wall Street Journal, gives March 2022 and says most of the top management had been replaced.

How coffee-shop chains present themselves.

Coffee-shop chains are brands people meet at the counter. The cup handed over, the sleeve around it, the menu board behind the barista and the sign over the door all carry the name, and the companies show them in their own photographs and on their own websites. A chain that buys another often keeps the second name on the shop front, so one owner can run several looks on the same high street.

Naming is usually plain and close to the product. Chains name house blends, seasonal drinks and loyalty schemes in their own voice, borrow words from Italian or from their home language, and describe store formats by where they sit: high streets, railway and underground stations, airports, shopping centres and, more recently, drive-throughs. Some keep a single format; others add kiosks and cafés inside other retailers.

Ownership is where the stories diverge. Many chains began with one café and a founder, then passed through private equity firms, family investment companies or stock-market listings, and some have gone private again. Corporate pages tell the founding story, while independent trade press and national newspapers record the deals, the restructurings, the court rulings and the openings abroad, with dates.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each chain: who founded it and where, who owns it now, how it grew and what it says about its coffee and baking. Where a fact rests only on the company’s own word, it is given as the company’s claim. The palette and typeface shown are our own unofficial interpretation, not the brand’s.

A deer, a blue cup and a menu built for phones.

After the restructuring, the menu did much of the talking. Chinese Wikipedia says a coconut latte launched in April 2021 became a regular menu item, and that a co-branded “sauce-aroma latte” made with the baijiu maker Kweichow Moutai went on sale on 4 September 2023 and became a talking point on Chinese social media. The 10,000th shop opened on Zhongshan Road in Xiamen on 5 June 2023, Chinese Wikipedia says, and English Wikipedia reports a 30,000th shop, in Shenzhen, announced in February 2026.

The chain then went abroad. English Wikipedia says the first two overseas shops opened in Singapore on 31 March 2023, at Marina Square and Ngee Ann City, and that in November 2024 the Malaysian company Hextar Industries announced it had the exclusive right to run Luckin shops in Malaysia. Chinese Wikipedia records five trial shops in Hong Kong from 28 December 2024. Restaurant Business reported that the first two US shops opened in New York on 30 June 2025, on Broadway and on Sixth Avenue, and Daily Coffee News said in June 2026 that Luckin had more than 33,000 stores worldwide and 14 in the US, all in New York.

The mark itself has been defended in court. World Coffee Portal reported in March 2025 that Luckin had won a trademark infringement case in Thailand against the Royal 50R Group, which was barred from using the Luckin name and logo; the same report captions the chain’s emblem as its deer logo.

For a design guide, Luckin Coffee shows how a coffee brand can be organised around an app, a pick-up point and a single recognisable emblem rather than a sit-down café; compare it with the Cotti Coffee brand guidelines and the Starbucks brand guidelines. For this guide we use a cobalt blue, ink blue, milk white and latte tan with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Luckin Coffee’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.