A Luckin Coffee store in Kunming, China (2024)

Luckin Coffee Inc. (Chinese: 瑞幸咖啡; pinyin: Ruìxìng Kāfēi) is a Chinese coffee company and coffeehouse chain. It was founded in Beijing in 2017. As of March 2023, it managed 9,351 stores which included 6,310 self-operated stores and 3,041 partnership stores. Monthly active customer numbers reached 500 million in June 2022. On 18 July 2024, the total Luckin coffee store number reached 20,000. The company operates shops, stores, and kiosks that offer coffee, tea, and food. Customers need to download an app to order and pay for drinks online. Luckin is currently headquartered in Xiamen. Luckin Coffee quickly expanded over the years and outnumbered the number of Starbucks stores in China by 2019.

In January 2020, short-seller Carson Block and his firm Muddy Waters Research published an anonymous 89-page investigative report on Twitter, claiming that Luckin Coffee had falsified financial and operational figures; the company denied the allegations. In April 2020, however, the company revealed that it had inflated its 2019 sales revenue by up to US$310 million. This resulted in the stock price crashing and several executives being fired. Trading was suspended and the company was delisted from NASDAQ on 29 June 2020. The company filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in the US in February 2021. In December 2021, Luckin Coffee received court approval from a federal judge in Manhattan to restructure $460M worth of its debt and to settle a number of class-action lawsuits against it over the fabricated sales figures. In 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that the company has emerged from bankruptcy after completing the restructuring of its financial debt under United States Code, and also replaced most of its top management who were held accountable for the earlier fraud. (Full article...)

Cuban espresso, also known as Café Cubano (or Colada, Cuban coffee, cafecito, Cuban pull, and Cuban shot), is a type of espresso that originated in Cuba. Specifically, it refers to an espresso shot which is sweetened (traditionally with natural brown sugar whipped with the first and strongest drops of espresso). However, the name can refer to coffee based drinks that include Cuban espresso as the main ingredient, such as café con leche.

Drinking café cubano remains a prominent social and cultural activity in Cuba and in Cuban-American communities, particularly in Miami, Tampa and the Florida Keys. (Full article...)

• ... that the anti-Francoist guerrilla Marcelino Massana pranked the Civil Guard captain who was trying to kill him by paying for his coffee?
• ... that Kenyan coffee farmer "Pinkie" Jackson amassed Africa's largest collection of native butterflies?
• ... that the Highfield Cocoa and Coffee House in Sheffield, England, sold tea, coffee and cocoa at a penny a pint and also provided billiards and reading rooms?
• ... that actor Tatsunari Kimura ate pancakes and drank coffee while talking for eight hours during the filming of the television drama Old-Fashioned Cupcake?
• ... that Mammillaria luethyi was not seen for 44 years after being discovered growing in a coffee can on the windowsill of Mrs Crosby's?
• ... that Justly Watson died suddenly in 1757 from the effects of poison administered in his coffee, it was believed, by a servant?
• ... that in a copyright infringement case over a coffee-table history of the Grateful Dead, the Second Circuit held that a reuser can still claim fair use despite negotiating with the rights holder?
• ... that Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly was released after the main creator of Coffee Talk died in March 2022?