Final week, I whooshed right into a Luckin espresso store in Decrease Manhattan, snatched my cellular order off the counter, and was again on the road inside eight seconds—as if I’d run upstairs to seize my keys.
The truth that this required zero human interplay barely registered, particularly as a result of I used to be too giddy concerning the deal I’d scored on the app. My iced coconut latte value a mere $1.99—a full 69% off the common value, after I used one of many six energetic coupons that appeared on the display.
I had formally gotten myself swept up in America’s newest fast-food development: low-cost, flavorful drinks prepared instantly, offered by Chinese language chains on apps the place the coupons give hourly countdowns. I took a sip and loved the coconut latte Luckin is pushing for all of Might, a drink it claims has been offered greater than 2 billion instances worldwide since April 2021.
Chinese language chains—Luckin Espresso, Mixue Ice Cream & Tea, Cotti Espresso, and Chagee amongst them—really feel constructed for this second, when Individuals are pinched for money and spending is tilting laborious towards bargains and little treats. Their success right here could decide whether or not habits cast in China’s brutal shopper financial system will reshape how the remainder of the world buys and sells quick meals.
Chinese language quick meals colonizes the U.S.
China has a head begin on coping with the “down financial system.” The nation has been hit laborious. Spending is projected to drop 18 points in 2026, trapping its food-and-beverage sector in what analysts name an acute oversupply drawback.
China now has roughly 3 times extra shops than the U.S. per capita, a saturation degree that has triggered a profit-killing race to the underside. The nation is in its third yr of the so-called espresso wars, the place chains like Luckin (the most important, with 33,000 shops) and Cotti (a distant second, at 16,000) drove costs as little as 40 cents a cup final summer season. There are too many shops chasing too few clients.
So now the most important gamers are migrating right here. Prior to now yr, U.S. shoppers have gotten their first Luckin outposts and their first style of Mixue, the world’s largest food-and-beverage chain, which sells cheese-foam tea and $1 smooth serve. They’ve witnessed the openings of Cotti espresso outlets and Chagee teahouses, and a twentyfold leap in Heytea cafés. They’ve additionally seen the arrival of meals chains like Wallace, China’s 20,000-unit KFC rival, which offers Californians a three-for-$10 rooster sandwich deal. Primarily, although, the inflow is being pushed by a flood of beverage joints hawking low-cost espresso, tea, ice cream, and sweets.
The inflow marks a putting reversal from the ’90s, when American fast-food firms started pouring into China, lured by the irresistible pull of a billion new clients—and the turnabout has occurred with outstanding pace. Only a few years in the past, U.S.-based espresso chains nonetheless eyed China as their nice untapped frontier.
On this subscriber-exclusive story, you’ll study:
- What Starbucks taught Chinese language entrepreneurs about quick meals—and the way it’s now being offered again to Individuals
- Why drinks are key to successful over clients within the U.S.
- Which marketing company is influencing Chinese language manufacturers’ technique
- The one massive factor that might journey up Chinese language chains
How Starbucks taught China
Three and a half years in the past, I reported on Starbucks’s aggressive development technique in China. Starbucks was opening a brand new café each 9 hours within the nation, a tempo so aggressive, it left some analysts puzzled.
Specialists I interviewed noticed an organization working laborious to appease the Communist Occasion. Founder Howard Schultz thought China represented the longer term: an enormous center class hungry for the “inexpensive luxurious” of Starbucks espresso and his model of recent group, despite the fact that espresso was nonetheless a largely unfamiliar drink there. By the 2010s, China had change into Starbucks’s second-biggest market, and Schultz declared it could overtake the U.S. for the highest spot by 2025.
As a substitute, the other occurred.
Customers proved reluctant to pay Starbucks costs when the homegrown rivals that popped up supplied low-cost drinks, hassle-free cellular orders, fast supply, and countless viral menu stunts. Starbucks pursued a pickup-only format within the U.S. after the pandemic (an ill-fated transfer that the corporate is simply now rectifying), however was dedicated to sustaining the model’s high-end coffeehouse picture in China.
The corporate’s share of China’s espresso market fell from a excessive of 42% in 2017 to 14% by 2024, at the same time as its retailer rely doubled. A latte that value $4.25 at Starbucks went for $2.25 at Luckin and $1.75 at Cotti.
In April of this yr, beneath new CEO Brian Niccol’s management, Starbucks lastly reduce its losses and offered the China operation to Boyu Capital, a private-equity agency cofounded by the grandson of former Chinese language president Jiang Zemin. Boyu obtained a positive deal: It paid $4 billion to function roughly 20% of Starbucks’s 40,000 international shops.
And it wasn’t simply Starbucks: Tim Hortons, the one different Western espresso chain in China with greater than 1,000 shops, noticed gross sales fall 5.4% final yr and posted $62 million in losses.
In the meantime, the American espresso menu was evolving. A decade in the past, iced was sufficient. “Millennials love chilly brew,” Dunkin’ CEO Nigel Travis said after a menu revamp. Across the similar time, Schultz insisted the marketplace for chilly espresso drinks was “limitless.”
At present, in all places from Starbucks and Dunkin’ to Panera and Dutch Bros., you discover dragonfruit refreshers with boba pearls, fruit-flavored chilly foam, teas full of fruit slices, ube macchiatos, and yuzu-filled croissants. America’s fast-food chains spent years attempting to show China to drink espresso. Now, again dwelling, it’s beginning to really feel prefer it’s Shanghai’s flip to show Seattle.
Luckin and Starbucks sq. off within the U.S.
For its first U.S. location, Luckin selected Decrease Manhattan, organising in a shuttered Physique Store on Broadway close to Astor Place. The heavy foot visitors and proximity to NYU’s campus made it interesting. However actually, this appeared like a approach to mock Starbucks.
As soon as a hangout for East Village characters close to The Village Voice workplaces, Astor Place had for 3 a long time been the location of a Starbucks that was briefly the biggest within the U.S.—a well-liked examine spot, date meetup, and de facto public restroom overlooking the sq.. The café closed unexpectedly in 2024. Retailer administration blamed an “astronomically excessive” lease hike, although the owner countered that lease stayed the “very same.” Starbucks cited “the wants of our clients.”
Months later, in June 2025, Luckin opened what it labeled retailer No. U.S. 00001 a block away. (Sure, Luckin’s numbering system for U.S. places goes as much as 99,999.) It’s extra of a beverage dispensary, accepting no orders in particular person and that includes simply three small tables—and it could most likely have popped a vessel in a youthful Howard Schultz’s brow.
(A facet notice: Whereas it marked Luckin’s bodily arrival to the U.S., the corporate wasn’t a stranger to American markets. From mid-2019 to mid-2020, it traded on the Nasdaq, reaching a valuation of $12 billion earlier than regulators accused it of inflating income by 45%. Luckin paid the Securities and Change Fee $180 million to settle fraud costs, and it was delisted.)
On the nook throughout from the brand new Luckin sat a vacant storefront. Following the grand opening, Starbucks rented the window area on each exposures and hung adverts. It additionally purchased a video advert on the intersection’s subway entrance. Once I swung by, I might see Luckin clients being greeted in two instructions by a mannequin smiling along with her Starbucks iced espresso.
The adverts appeared to telegraph some nervousness. Luckin couldn’t critically eat into Starbucks’s market share on its dwelling turf, proper? Effectively, possibly it might. Final yr, Starbucks closed 42 New York cafés as a part of a U.S. restructuring plan centered on reviving its “third place” mannequin. It shuttered 400 underperforming shops nationwide, about 1% of its international footprint. Round 100 had been mobile-order-only places. Requested whether or not Luckin’s arrival had factored into this, Starbucks told the Monetary Instances that it was merely “doubling down on what clients have all the time cherished about Starbucks—a heat and welcoming coffeehouse with high-quality drinks crafted by a talented barista.”
In the meantime, since its first U.S. retailer opened, Luckin has added 15 extra Manhattan places, with not less than three extra on the best way. Retailer No. 00002, in Chelsea, faces a Starbucks, as do three of its different websites. Eight extra are situated inside a two-block stroll.
However stalking Starbucks would solely accomplish that a lot. I wished to grasp the precise technique for successful over American espresso drinkers. I attempted to satisfy with company Luckin representatives, however a gathering scheduled on the Monetary District’s Fulton Road retailer (across the nook from a Starbucks) fell by way of twice. I used to be additionally advised to presubmit my questions, as a result of they wanted “approval from China” first.
The U.S. staff later defined that the subjects I had requested to debate had been “exterior of their present communications parameters.” They did, nonetheless, supply me a 700-word pre-written Q&A the place they answered questions they wrote themselves. One immediate learn, “How the model is approaching localization from a product/advertising and marketing perspective, with out moving into enterprise technique or growth planning.” They responded: “For Luckin, localization is about understanding how espresso and beverage tradition match into native clients’ day by day lives, not merely translating a model from one market to a different.”
What Luckin has supplied traders isn’t any extra illuminating. CEO Jinyi Guo has called the U.S. “strategically essential” to the rising model (its international retailer rely has elevated 39% previously yr, to 33,596 models) and believes that “Luckin’s distinctive worth propositions and buyer expertise” are able to compete in even a “extremely developed” espresso market like america.
Probably the most direct remark was most likely one in an Instagram post addressed to clients after the Astor Place grand opening: “That is just the start. NYC, we’re right here.”
Mixue sings an American tune
Mixue—a Chinese language ice cream and tea chain based in 1997 that has dethroned McDonald’s because the world’s largest meals and beverage chain—arrived within the U.S. six months in the past in a bicoastal strike, opening places in Los Angeles and New York on the similar time.
On a latest afternoon on the New York Metropolis flagship by Herald Sq., individuals had been queued on a crimson carpet (as occurs typically) for his or her flip to get boba and ube smooth serve in a conspicuously Barney shade of purple. The storefront, two tales of all crimson, options the pleasant, cape-wearing mascot, a snowman named Snow King, perched over the phrase “I LOVE YOU 🖤 YOU LOVE ME”—the lyrics to its world-famous jingle, which performs from loudspeakers successfully nonstop. One pedestrian sang alongside as he handed by.
The Mixue motto, as founder Zhang Hongchao relayed it to Chinese language state media, is: “Let individuals world wide eat properly and drink properly for simply two American {dollars}.” Since December, New Yorkers have certainly been paying $1.99 for contemporary lemonade and $1.19 for smooth serve—half the value of a McDonald’s cone, and sure the most cost effective in Manhattan. (Costs are barely greater at L.A.’s Hollywood location.) Fruit teas and sundaes spherical out the menu, however one factor each buyer takes house is the Mixue theme music, lodged in their head.
That’s as a result of the model took “Oh! Susanna”—the 180-year-old American folks music about coming from Alabama with a banjo on the knee—and changed every line of its melody with the identical 11-word phrase: “I really like you, you’re keen on me, Mixue ice cream and tea.”
The advertising and marketing company behind this relentlessly cheerful earworm, Hua & Hua, works with a number of prime Chinese language meals and beverage chains. In China, it’s recognized for creating the Tremendous Signal, a way arguing that probably the most sensible advertising and marketing is commonly the least artistic. As a substitute of inventing one thing new, a model ought to search for a common image already hardwired into tradition—a folks tune, a clown, a mermaid—and declare it as its personal. Brother duo Sam and Nan Hua termed this “cultural copyright” in a 2013 e-book.
A long time in the past, American manufacturers pulled comparable strikes in China, the place Ronald McDonald mugged for photos with social gathering officers, and KFC swapped a rooster mascot, Chicky, for the all-American Colonel. Hua & Hua had this to tug from, and considers Mixue its magnum opus. Its AABA melody (present in “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “Over the Rainbow,” “Each Breath You Take,” and lots of Beatles songs) is likely one of the catchiest forms of music. And since “Oh! Susanna” entered the general public area way back, Mixue paid nothing for it.
At December’s Herald Sq. grand opening, clients who sang the jingle obtained a free ice cream. TikTok and Instagram are filled with American influencers singing it into their digicam, typically mangling the identify as “Micks-yoo” or “Micks-oo–eey” as a substitute of the right “Mee-shweh.”
Earlier this yr, Mixue opened its 60,000th international location. The vast majority of shops—greater than 55,000—are nonetheless in mainland China. However strains at the moment are forming in Bangkok, Jakarta, and Los Angeles to expertise shopping for tea in Mixue’s carnival ambiance of animated menu screens, employees dancing in Snow King costumes, machines whirring, and the unending jingle.
The way forward for Chinese language chains in America
Not way back, the consensus amongst Westerners about Chinese language retail manufacturers was they had been “good, however not nice, and positively not cool,” argues Chris Pereira, CEO of iMpact, a agency that helps Chinese language firms develop into Western markets. He says that American shoppers’ openness, not less than to uncommon drinks, is one thing Chinese language manufacturers themselves “are nonetheless attempting to determine what to do about.”
It took American chains a long time to acculturate themselves to Chinese language customs and palates after they entered the nation within the ’80s and ’90s. At first, KFC and McDonald’s charged an excessive amount of: a bit over $1 for a burger, 50 cents for a Coke in a society the place month-to-month wages had been $17 to $35. This was purposeful, to market Western quick meals as a “deal with.” Typically, these had been household outings that everyone dressed up for; it’s why McWeddings stay a factor. However as incomes rose and native rivals flooded the market with cheaper burgers and pizza, the luxurious facet waned. By the late ’90s, each chains had been beginning to change into reliable household eating places.
Starbucks arrived in 1999, securing coveted area in Beijing’s China World Commerce Heart. Its intention to offer Chinese language shoppers a contemporary, upscale spin on their conventional teahouse turned its “third locations” into a standing image for a sure sort of social striver and a punch line for others. A supply I interviewed in 2022 recalled satirical recommendation being handed across the web within the 2010s about easy methods to “act cool at Starbucks”: Order an espresso, carry The Economist, and go away cash on the desk so you would wave at workers and say, “I’m used to tipping in America. Preserve it.”
But Starbucks appeared to relish the picture. “We don’t run a reduction firm,” Schultz said in 2024 as rivals had been virtually giving espresso away. “We’ve already established a premium model picture available in the market.”
The stress between what a model is at dwelling and what it turns into overseas is the entice laid by growth, Pereira argues. It performs out in menu design, cultural signaling, workforce practices, even naming conventions. “Get the steadiness mistaken in any of those instructions and also you lose,” he says.
Once I consider Chinese language chains promoting their translation of American tradition again to Individuals, nothing involves thoughts quicker than the insidious Mixue jingle.
“Oh! Susanna” has an advanced historical past in america. Its nationwide reputation turned Stephen Foster into America’s first skilled songwriter. However the music is rooted in blackface minstrel traditions, and was solely later rewritten to strip out specific racism. What stays is a vaguely Southern-sounding ditty that many individuals can sing only a few phrases of.
Whether or not Mixue knew about this tangled historical past, I couldn’t let you know. Firm representatives didn’t reply in time to my inquiries.
However one factor is definite. Since listening to it, I can’t get the blasted music out of my head. “I really like you, you’re keen on me, Mixue ice cream and tea.” Does it even matter that it is senseless? It faucets into one thing primary and international—our urge for food for issues which are easy, candy, and simple to eat with out considering.
