Luckin Coffee App Crashes in Wake of Cooked Books Revelation

It has been a bad week for Luckin Coffee. 

Yesterday, their stock prices plummeted when it was revealed that the coffee delivery giant had faked approximately RMB 2.2 billion in 2019 sales. And today, when loyal customers caught wind that their favorite cup o’ joe was in a cup o’ jeopardy, they rushed to order what they feared might be their last Luckin latte, should the company go under as a result of the scandal.

The news caused so much lust for Luckin that the service’s app – which is pretty much the only way to order from their thousands of locations – buckled under the sheer number of additional orders and has been down for most of the day. The situation was apparently so dire that Luckin's social media team broke out the trusty facepalm emoji as they took to Weibo to apologize.

“Due to high traffic this afternoon, our app has crashed [facepalm]. Our coders are performing emergency repairs,” posted Luckin's official account.

Just how much traffic did the app see? According to the Beijing News, the app’s servers were receiving at least three times as many requests compared to a normal day.

Reporting from the Luckin location in Sanlitun Soho, a caffeine-deficient member of the Beijinger team said that the Luckin staff was loitering idly in their store, unable to take orders via any other means than through the official app.

As of 3pm this afternoon, the app seems to have recovered to the point that orders can be placed, although not without receiving an “our servers are busy” error message several times throughout the process. Unfortunately, for the health-conscious, it may be too late, as medical professionals recommend no caffeine after 3pm, but if you’d like to skirt their advice and the Luckin app continues to crash, there are plenty more options around town.

READ: How Luckin Coffee is Reforming China’s Coffee Culture

Images: Michael Wester, Weibo