Is Luckin Coffee of good quality? Raw materials are very important!

The first sentence of Luckin Coffee's prospectus is "Our mission is to become a part of everyone's daily life, starting with coffee."

For Luckin, coffee is like what B station UP host Xiao Danny called a "Grabber". If you can't even make a cup of coffee, how can you talk about concepts that attract people's interest?

Ladies and gentlemen, today I will not comment on Luckin Coffee from a capital perspective. This is not my expertise. If you are interested, you can search for a lot of them. I will just talk about how Luckin Coffee is.

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First, let's look at Luckin Coffee's menu. "Master Coffee" is all its coffee categories. According to what I said last time, these are all Italian coffee, right? If you haven't seen it, you can go and take a look at the last issue. That was an issue I wrote and drew, with my iPhone as a recorder and stockings on a clothes rack as a spray shield. Haha, this issue is the same. The most important thing to evaluate the quality of an Italian coffee is its espresso. We all know that espresso is made with an Italian coffee machine, so how do we know the quality of espresso? Four principles: 1. The quality of coffee beans. 2. Italian coffee grinder. 3. Italian coffee machine. 4. The person who makes coffee. Then let's talk about Luckin separately.

The 4 principles of Italian coffee

First, the quality of coffee beans. From the prospectus on May 6, 2019, we can see that "In 2018, we mainly purchased coffee beans from one supplier." Then it says in its supplier: "We purchase high-quality Arabica coffee beans from well-known plantations in Guatemala, Brazil, Ethiopia and Colombia. We mainly purchase roasted coffee beans from branches of Yeuan Yeou Enterprise Co., Ltd., a well-known Taiwanese roasting company (Yuanyou). Recently, we have also started working with UCC Ueshima Coffee Co., Ltd., one of the largest roasting companies in Asia. To consolidate our control over the coffee bean procurement and roasting process, we formed a joint venture with one of our roasted coffee bean suppliers in May 2018, which has not yet started operations as of the date of the prospectus." So, in the latest prospectus on January 7, 2020, it became, "We mainly purchase coffee beans from three suppliers." Do you understand? So far, Luckin Coffee's raw beans come from high-quality Arabica beans from the above 4 countries.

The roasting of coffee beans mainly comes from these three companies: Taiwan's largest coffee roasting company-Yuanyou, Asia's largest coffee roasting company-UCC and the coffee roasting base in Pingnan, Zhejiang. This coffee roasting base is a joint venture between Luckin Coffee, Mitsui & Co., and Taiwan Yuanyou. On January 7, 2020, the Luckin Coffee Roasting Xiamen Base was officially laid in Tongan Light Industry Food Park. The first phase has a total investment of 300 million yuan, 2 German PROBAT imported coffee bean roasting production lines, 1 8,000-ton coffee bean turnover warehouse and 1 4,000-ton coffee bean finished product warehouse. It is expected to produce 30,000 tons of coffee beans per year. The second phase of the project will expand production to 40,000 tons of coffee beans, and reserve space for deep processing of coffee. If you are interested, you can search for a few keywords: Mitsui & Co., Taiwan Yuanyou, UCC, PROBAT, I won't go into details here. What I want to say is that for a young coffee chain company, the quality from the purchase of coffee beans to the roasting of coffee beans is not bad.

Unlike Starbucks, which has decades of experience in coffee bean procurement and roasting, if Luckin were to purchase and roast coffee beans by itself from the beginning, the quality would not be guaranteed. Professional matters should be left to professionals. How can the experience of a few-year-old child compare with that of a 40-50-year-old adult?

The Origin of Luckin Coffee Beans

Second, Italian grinders and Italian coffee machines. I will talk about these two principles together. Yes, grinders are divided into single-origin grinders and Italian grinders. Single-origin grinders generally have conical grinders, while Italian grinders have flat grinders. The shapes of the coffee powder cut by the two are different when viewed under a microscope, and the taste of the extracted coffee is also very different. At the same time, the coarseness of the coffee powder ground by the Italian grinder will directly affect the flow rate of the coffee liquid. If the water temperature remains unchanged, it is easy to under-extract or over-extract, and sometimes even no coffee liquid can flow out. Speaking of the working principle of the Italian coffee machine, the coffee powder is passed through the brewing head of the Italian coffee machine to extract about 30ml of espresso under high temperature and high pressure. Under high temperature and high pressure, espresso is rich in oil. Italian coffee machines are divided into semi-automatic and fully automatic. Let's talk about the Italian semi-automatic coffee machine first. It manually puts the coffee powder ground by the Italian bean grinder into the handle, then presses the powder, hangs on the coffee machine brewing head, and presses the coffee extraction switch to start extracting espresso. Most semi-automatic coffee machines are separate from the Italian bean grinder, and currently only a few are combined together.

I remember that in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a model of an espresso machine called expobar. The advantage of combining this espresso machine and espresso grinder is that it takes up less space on the bar, but 80% of the space inside the espresso machine is occupied by the boiling water boiler, and the temperature inside is very high. If a grinder is embedded inside, the temperature of the grinder is also high. The coffee beans are placed in the bean bin, and the hot steam flows upward, which will inevitably transfer heat to the coffee beans. The grinder of the espresso grinder is also inside the espresso machine, and the temperature is even higher. When grinding, the coffee powder will be immediately transferred to heat. In this way, the coffee flavor is lost a lot before the coffee beans become coffee powder and are made into espresso. Therefore, it is rare to see a semi-automatic espresso machine that integrates an espresso machine and an espresso grinder.

Exploded view of semi-automatic espresso machine

A fully automatic espresso machine is a semi-automatic espresso machine. The process of putting coffee powder into the handle, pressing the powder, and hanging the brewing head on the handle is automated. You only need to press a button to make espresso. However, the espresso grinder must be integrated into the coffee machine. Fully automatic espresso machines are the best choice for large chain coffee shops that are developing rapidly in the short term. This does not require high technical skills from bar staff. As long as the parameters of the coffee machine are adjusted well, the taste you drink in any store in the world is not much different. This is why most Starbucks stores have switched from semi-automatic espresso machines to fully automatic espresso machines. As for some Starbucks stores that have semi-automatic espresso machines in addition to fully automatic espresso machines, I will talk about it next time I have the opportunity. Let's talk about Luckin Coffee here. Luckin Coffee uses a fully automatic espresso machine from Schaerer in Switzerland. In the early days, it also used Franke's coffee machine. As for why Schaerer was finally chosen, I saw this paragraph in their prospectus. Anyway, everyone can figure it out for themselves.

But whether it is Schaerer or Franke, I have come into contact with both brands, which are considered first-class fully automatic espresso machines. The biggest impact on quality is the maintenance of coffee equipment in the later stage, as well as the regular adjustment of parameters. Since Luckin Coffee currently purchases machines directly from Switzerland, it does its own maintenance in China, and I don’t know the specific methods. Let me talk about Starbucks. In addition to maintenance like a car when it reaches a certain number of kilometers, for example, when the coffee machine makes 50,000 cups, 100,000 cups, and 150,000 cups of coffee, there are different parts replacement requirements, regardless of whether the parts are broken or not. Then, the coffee equipment must be maintained before holidays, and the coffee machine parameters will be adjusted to normal during maintenance. However, in the latest Luckin Coffee prospectus, I saw a statement that was not there before. They are integrating all coffee machines into a monitoring system that can automatically monitor the performance of the coffee machine and report any repair and maintenance requirements in a timely manner.

This may be Schaerer's "Schaerer coffee link" technology. So there is not much difference in hardware. If there is an unmanned car, there will be an unmanned coffee machine. The latest prospectus on January 7th mentioned that the unmanned retail plan will be launched from January 8th. One of the channels is Luckin Coffee EXPRESS, which still uses Schaerer's coffee machine.

schaerer coffee link

The last principle is the person who makes the coffee. This is the biggest variable, but since we use a fully automatic espresso machine, the coarseness of the coffee powder, the strength of the powder pressing, and the extraction time are all adjusted, so it is less dependent on people. If we have to talk about the influence of people on the taste of coffee, it is the technology of making milk coffee and fancy coffee with milk foam. Each chain store has its own training requirements, and I believe the overall taste is not much different.

Let's talk about coffee ingredients. In the prospectus of May 6, 2019, it was stated that "dairy products were mainly purchased from four suppliers, and syrup was mainly purchased from three suppliers." On January 7, 2020, it was stated again that "dairy products were mainly purchased from four suppliers, and syrup was mainly purchased from four suppliers." Yes, there is one more syrup supplier. According to my analysis, this one more syrup supplier may be the NFC puree used for Xiaolu Tea. The dairy products should not have changed. The information I have collected so far is that the dairy products are mainly Australia and Asia Ranch, Weigang New Green Garden, Anjia and Yili Anmuxi yogurt, of which the first three are used in Italian coffee.

Of course, the milk used in Italian coffee is whole milk, so that milk foam can be made. Skim milk cannot be foamed, so those who are entangled in whether Luckin Coffee uses whole milk or skim milk can rest, because all the Italian coffees with milk foam you drink are made with whole milk. Let's talk about syrup. The three suppliers are: MONIN in France, Fabbri in Italy, and DaVinci in the United States. These three syrups have their own characteristics and are all world-renowned syrups. Among them, DaVinci is a factory that makes syrup for Starbucks. The taste difference between them is still relatively large, but the difference is small when put into drinks, because at the beginning, syrup was not mainly used to make drinks, but was mostly used in cocktails. I will have a chance to talk about syrup next time, but I think there may not be many friends who pay attention to syrup. Whether it is dairy products or syrups, the raw materials used by Luckin Coffee have reached the quality they should have.

Syrup used in Luckin Coffee

Luckin Coffee’s whole milk

To sum up: Luckin Coffee has good quality in equipment and raw materials. Most single-store coffee sales are relatively high every day. One advantage of high sales is that coffee beans are used up quickly, and the newly opened bags are fresh. The coffee equipment is preheated and running well, and the coffee produced is stable. For those coffee shops that only sell a few or dozens of cups a day, you can imagine that the coffee beans in the grinder bean bin have been opened for a few days. Whether the machine is preheated or not, the brewing head may still be cold. Even if such coffee is made with the world's first-class beans and a first-class coffee machine, the quality may be second-rate or third-rate. Simply put, in the current domestic coffee environment, as a consumer, it is worth spending a few yuan or more than ten yuan to drink a cup of Luckin coffee. For me, who just needs coffee and can't afford Starbucks, I will pick up my phone to see if Luckin's coupons have arrived.