Technology giant Tencent is teaming up with Chinese start-up Luckin Coffee to take on China’s growing coffee-drinking market, the South China Morning Post reported.
Luckin and Tencent said they would collaborate in building “smart cafés” and use artificial intelligence applications to facilitate Luckin’s operations. The announcement comes a month after the Starbucks-Alibaba alliance to “transform the coffee experience in China.”
A new comer to China’s fast-growing coffee market, Luckin launched in May and has since opened 1,003 stores in 13 cities, and sold over 26 million cups of coffee. In mid-May, it accused Starbucks of trying to monopolize the China market by forcing suppliers to choose between the two chains.
China’s local market for coffee products is worth about 100 billion yuan ($14.62 billion), with instant coffee accounting for 72 percent and freshly brewed coffee making up 18 percent, according to the news site.
