Chinese coffee brand Luckin Coffee is reportedly set to open its first United States (US) site following the emergence of a storefront featuring company livery and the words “opening soon”.
The opening of the store, which is in New York’s East Village, would be Luckin’s first expansion out of the Asia-Pacific region, where it currently operates 24,097 stores across China, Malaysia, and Singapore as per its unaudited Q1 2025 financial reports.
Of those store, 15,598 are self-operated and 8499 are classified as partnership stores.
Luckin Coffee is also hiring for a range of on-site positions in New York and New Jersey.
The company’s desire to expand to the US has been cited by the business, having previously released a statement confirming its desire to enter the US market in its Q3 2024 financial reports.
“The international market encompasses diverse regions, each requiring long-term investment before realising substantial financial returns,” the company said at the time.
“Given the maturity, saturation, and competitiveness of the US coffee market, we intend to approach our expansion strategy there with careful consideration and a disciplined execution plan.”
Luckin Coffee is not an unknown brand to American consumers, despite never having held a store in the country. The company initially went public on the Nasdaq stock market in 2019, but filed for Chapter 22 bankruptcy in 2022.
Since then, however, Luckin has only continued to move from strength to strength its home market of China, where its cashier-less, mostly automated system has allowed it to thrive on smaller sites than traditional cafés.
It has also since expanded into Malaysia and Singapore and recently celebrated two years of growth in the Singapore market, which included the opening of a Houston Rockets-themed coffee shop made in partnership with the NBA side in 2024.
It is now China’s largest coffee retailer by sales. In its recently released unaudited Q1 2025 financial reports, Luckin claims to have made total net revenues of over $US1.2 billion, which is a 41.2 per cent year-on-year increase compared to Q1 2024.
This potential move into the US comes amid a trade war between the US and China, during which import tariffs have continued to be raised on both sides.
The US has imposed a 145 per cent tariff on Chinese goods entering the country. In response, China imposed a 125 per cent tariff on US goods.
A reduction on Chinese tariffs to 50 per cent has been floated by US President Donald Trump.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and The Peoples Republic of China Vice-Premier He Lifeng are set to meet in Geneva on Saturday 10 May and Sunday 11 May.
