CHINA – Luckin Coffee, China’s largest coffee chain operator is entering the automated retail market with the launch of its “luckin coffee EXPRESS” smart unmanned coffee machine and “luckin pop” smart vending machine.

The luckin coffee EXPRESS features Swiss Schaerer coffee machines, IIAC Gold Award coffee bean blends from WBC coffee masters and other high-quality ingredients.

The coffee chain claims that luckin popterminals will achieve significant economies of scale through large volume procurement, customization while significantly reducing channel costs.

The unmanned terminals will cover locations including office buildings, campuses, airports, bus terminals, gas stations, highway service stations and residential communities, supplementing the existing Luckin store network.

According to the company, these terminals are fully integrated with its technology system and are empowered by IoT, big data, facial recognition, and other advanced technologies, which will create new customers experience.

Jenny Zhiya Qian, Chief Executive Officer of Luckin Coffee, commented, “Luckin Coffee’s unmanned retail network, store footprint and e-commerce channels, together form our proprietary omni-channel customer traffic network.

“With our value propositions of high quality, high affordability and high convenience, Luckin is rapidly becoming a well recognized, on-trend, and mass market fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brand.

“Luckin Coffee is dedicated to building a closed-loop smart retail platform with our own customer traffic and our own products.

“We will continue to grow both own traffic and products, improve brand value, expand the scale of our platform, and create more value for our customers.

“Luckin Coffee is on track to realize our mission of being part of everyone’s life, starting with coffee.”

Luckin Coffee also disclosed that its number of self-operated stores reached 4,507 by the end of 2019, which the Company believes makes it the largest coffee chain by number of stores in China as of December 31, 2019.

In addition, the number of cumulative transacting customers reached over 40 million as of December 31, 2019 as the company continues to battle its major rival, Starbucks.

The unmanned retail strategy is expected to further fuel customer acquisition and increase customer purchase frequency for Luckin Coffee.