What happened
Shares of Luckin Coffee (NASDAQ:LK) were adult 11.7% as of 3:05 p.m. EST Wednesday after a Chinese coffee emporium sequence announced skeleton for deploying new “smart” unmanned coffee and vending machines.
So what
In a press recover late Tuesday, Luckin pronounced it will enter a “unmanned sell market” around a launch of a Luckin Coffee Express coffee appurtenance and a Luckin Pop Mini intelligent vending machines. The terminals will use a accumulation of cutting-edge facilities (the association says they’re “empowered by IoT, large data, facial recognition, and other modernized technologies”).
Image source: Getty Images.
“Luckin Coffee is dedicated to building a closed-loop intelligent sell height with a possess patron trade and a possess products,” CEO Jenny Zhiya Qian said. “We will continue to grow both possess trade and products, urge code value, enhance a scale of a platform, and emanate some-more value for a customers.”
Now what
The association also pronounced it owned 4,507 self-operated stores during a finish of 2019, portion some-more than 40 million accumulative customers. The unmanned machines will be strategically commissioned in places such as bureau buildings, airports, train terminals, propagandize campuses, gas stations, and residential communities to addition Luckin’s existent store network.
These new machines could paint a poignant source of incremental expansion for Luckin’s already fast-growing consumer discretionary brand. And a batch is responding in kind.