Two former projects turned out to be less than ideal, and Lu Zhengyao decided to sell coffee again.
Lu Zhengyao, former Chairman of Luckin Coffee (Chinese: Luckin Coffee), is reportedly planning a new venture to launch a new coffee brand, CottiCoffee (Chinese: 库迪咖啡).
This is Lu Zhengyao's third venture after passively leaving Luckin Coffee. In the past two years, this capital market figure, twice in the field of food and beverage venture he is not familiar with, first opened a noodle restaurant. After three months of business, the opening plan of the noodle stores was delayed on a large scale.
Then he began to launch the pre-made dishes business project. In just 4 months, the number of intentional sign-ups for national distributor stores reached 6,000. Similar to the fate of the former noodle stores, the pre-made dish business project was soon spat out by dealers that they could not earn money. Later, those stores closed one after another.
After almost two years of tossing and turning in unfamiliar areas, Lu Zhengyao decided to return to his old trade of selling coffee.
According to a CottiCoffee brand manual released in August 2022, the company is headquartered in Tianjin, with a registered capital of USD 100 million and a core management team from large new economy companies such as Luckin Coffee, China Auto Rental etc. ‘Cotti’originates from the Italian specialty cookie ‘Biscotti’, which is often used as an accompaniment to coffe, so ‘Cotti’ can be understood as ‘Coffee’.
CottiCoffee is not just another coffee brand, but a new pan-coffee lifestyle from the very beginning. In the future, CottiCoffee will offer not only coffee, but also bakery, snacks and drinks.
In other words, CottiCoffee is more about leading a new lifestyle. However, whether this new consumer concept will be recognized is yet to be verified by the market and time.