Luckin Coffee, China’s largest coffee chain, opened its first two U.S. stores on June 30, 2025, in Greenwich Village and NoMad. It is betting on a budget-friendly cup in a city where the average coffee now costs north of $7.
From Beijing to NoMad
Founded in 2017, Luckin went from startup to retail powerhouse in eight years, growing to 24,097 stores globally and surpassing Starbucks in China along the way. It built that scale on mobile ordering and fast delivery for China’s digital-native consumers. Now it is taking aim at the U.S., with one of its first locations at 800 Avenue of the Americas.
An app-only store
Luckin’s New York debut leans on a mobile-first, low-friction experience. Customers order only through the Luckin app, pay digitally and pick up their drink without speaking to a barista. The model is built for busy professionals who want speed, consistency and control during the morning rush.
The menu covers standard espresso, cold brew and matcha, plus fruit-and-coffee drinks such as the Pineapple Cold Brew and Apple Fizzy Americano, aimed at a Gen Z and millennial audience that shares what it buys on Instagram.
Designed for throughput
There is no fireplace and no faux-European charm: just a sleek counter, no cash registers and limited seating. The design is deliberate. It reflects Luckin’s operating efficiency and its real estate strategy, maximizing throughput in a high-rent urban market.
Get in, grab your coffee, and go. The small footprint is the strategy, not an oversight.
Why NoMad
The choice of NoMad is no accident. The neighborhood north of Madison Square Park has become one of the city’s most dynamic, with a growing density of tech firms, luxury hotels, fast-casual food and lifestyle brands. That mix brings digital-native consumers, brand-conscious professionals and steady foot traffic together on a few blocks. For a brand built on app adoption and visibility, NoMad is a launchpad, not just a location. More in our NoMad guide and in Breaking out of the fishbowl.
What comes next
Aggressive pricing, digital convenience and a minimalist format add up to a new blueprint for coffee chains in dense, high-rent cities. With Manhattan as its U.S. proving ground, the question is less whether Luckin can compete than how soon the next store opens.
The lesson reaches past coffee. Luckin sized its stores to how customers actually use them, and put them where its audience already is. Offices work the same way: the right footprint follows how people use the space, in the neighborhood where the people you need already are.