Rancaijing (ID:rancaijing) original
author | Liming Jin Junpin Su Qi Meng Yana Kong Mingming
editor | Wei Jia
Ruixing Coffee "self-exposed" 2.2 billion yuan of financial fraud cases continue to ferment, the special committee investigation is underway, China Securities Regulatory Commission It will be said that “we are highly concerned about the financial fraud of Luckin Coffee and strongly condemn the financial fraud of the company”.
Lu Zhengyao, chairman of Luckin Coffee, said in WeChat Moments on April 5, "I personally blame myself very much. No matter what the final investigation result of the independent committee is, I will take due responsibility."
, a former star startup company , The cutting-edge Chinese concept stocks that set new listing records, fell into a whirlpool of public opinion because of financial fraud. Supervision, questioning, and slobber hit it like a storm, and it is also facing a collapse of trust, legal proceedings, and business crisis.
Finance became the first domino to fall. It all originated from the short report released by Muddy Waters more than two months ago. The report stated that Luckin Coffee's revenue and profit data were seriously exaggerated.
According to the short selling report, Luckin’s counterfeiting methods focus on the following points:
1. Use the meal code to skip the number to exaggerate the order volume of the main store;
2. Exaggerate the unit price of the product, the actual unit price is much lower than the Swiss Fortunately, the price announced was inflated by 12.3%;
3. Exaggerated the average number of products per self-receiving order;
4. Overreported advertising expenditures in Focus Media, inflating store operating profits. Luckin did not really exceed the break-even point at the store level, and the actual loss was as high as 24.7%-28%. The accusation of financial fraud of
was finally confirmed by the Ruixing Special Committee. The committee initially found that Ruixing had inflated sales of 2.2 billion yuan. However, the specific method of fraud remains a mystery.
This time, Ran Caijing interviewed 5 Luckin employees who are currently employed or resigned. They used their own personal experiences to tell us about another aspect of Luckin. Over 70% of the orders in the
store are free. The company sends an email to notify that the order will "hop". Store manager. At the beginning, the store orders did not skip orders. One day later, the company sent an email to inform you that the order numbering rules should be changed to . For example, the previous small tickets were sorted like 1, 2, 3, and changed to 1, 3, and 7.
I didn't think this was a problem at the time, because it was still relatively common in the catering industry. I thought it might be to avoid letting colleagues know the real sales of the store, and did not think too much.
There are three people in our store, a manager, a deputy manager, and a barista. There are usually two people on duty in the store. Customers place orders online, so there is no need for a cashier, two people are enough.
We are a mall store. Most of the orders placed on weekdays are white-collar workers in office buildings, and there are more people shopping on weekends. There are more takeaways on weekdays and more self-pickups on weekends. Coffee still sells the most, followed by bread, then fawn tea, and finally snacks.
Under normal circumstances, the number of orders per day in the store is about 100, but most of them are free orders. When I first came, 90% of the orders in the store were free, and now there are about 70% of the free orders. The company has a variety of subsidy activities, such as free order for the first cup, full discount, and issuing coupons, causing many users to order free coffee. The biggest feeling
has at Luckin is that the company does not treat its employees that kind of feeling at home. I have an intern who worked at Starbucks before. He told me directly that he thinks Starbucks is good because the working atmosphere is very pleasant, just like family and friends, but he came to Ruixing to make money, nothing more .
Luckin really gave more money than Starbucks. The basic salary of the deputy store manager is 3,000 yuan, plus performance deducted various fees, and finally got about 3,500 yuan, Starbucks should be lower, but Starbucks benefits will be better, Luckin has no benefits.
The company is very demanding on its employees. For example, a store has a bad review because the customer is not satisfied with the taste, which has nothing to do with the store operation, because we use the machine to make coffee according to the company's standard, but the company will still deduct the store.Long salary. When the
store is basically not idle, it has to deal with various inspections every day. The company has a quality management department. As long as there is a problem with the store, the performance this month will definitely be gone. However, even if you get full marks, the company will not give any rewards.
company usually has some training, but they are all very simple things, which are of no practical use, that is, to operate the machine. Our barista also has a name called "coffee keystroke maker". Because the coffee machine is a fool-type operation, no skills are required, you just need to press the button. Anyway, I think I have worked as a store manager in Luckin's store, and I have no core competitiveness when I go out, because anyone can do these tasks. But Luckin's raw materials are no problem, and the coffee beans are also foreign Arabica coffee beans.
heard the news of Ruixing Finance's fraud, I was not surprised. Those of us at the bottom just find a place to work, and now we work together as a crowd. A problem with the company has no effect on us. I am not the mastermind. I am not even an accomplice, and I am already planning to leave and change jobs. For us, it is the same everywhere.
Luckin is not bad money in the early days. As long as you look at a piece of land, you will also need
if it is 20% higher than the market price. Song Li Former Luckin Coffee Store Expander
I joined in 2018 and I have left now. In the beginning, there were more than 70 people in this position in Beijing. My feeling from the company is that the steps are too big, the money is spent lavishly, and there are many people who are messing around.
In 2018, Luckin's goal in Beijing is to open 350 new stores. It may also be because of heavy pressure and heavy tasks. I found that the stores they reported were messy and the superiors were not strict. On average, each person can choose a store every two days, that is, about 30 stores are reported to the supervisor for review every day. The supervisor did this in one day, and there was no time to see it on the spot.
For example, someone reported to a store in the men's bathroom on the first floor of an office building, and only wrote the address without writing the details, and the supervisor passed it. After passing, the construction site went to see the site and found that the pit was still there. The property said that if you flatten the pit, the place will belong to you. Even if the women's bathroom is still nearby, Jian Jian will not say anything, because he also has the task of opening a shop quickly. This is one of the top ten jokes of the year.
For another example, I used to work in restaurants and knew that the rent in a shopping mall was 10 yuan per square meter, but my colleague reported it was 16 yuan per square meter, which was nearly 60% more. This mall has very few people and the supervisor passed.
had completed the task of opening a store by the end of the year and gave out prizes, but two weeks later, the Dongchuang incident happened.
At the end of 2018, there were media reports that Ruixing opened the store to the corner of the corner. After the incident was revealed, the department head was transferred to the construction department, and the head of the construction department came up.
A car driving on the highway started to brake hard. The first task of the new director of
is to replace all the bad business shops with good ones. At that time, it was said internally that the cost of a cup of coffee was 13.5 yuan after converting the rent and so on. According to this calculation, most of the stores in were not profitable. First of all, take-out is definitely a loss of . A set of cups, paper bags, and bottom trays cost more than 3 yuan, plus half a cup of milk, a cup of coffee sells for 7 yuan, it must lose money. We have calculated internally that a store must sell at least 220 cups of coffee a day to cover the cost of rent.
Ruixing asked Fengtai District and Fangshan District to open stores. In fact, these stores did not even have 50 orders a day. Developers feared that Ruixing would close down, so they took the initiative to buy coffee. In the later period of
, Luckin also started to count employees when opening a store, but everyone was cheating on . There was no video. The employees said that there were as many people as they were. If the full score of
is 100, after the new supervisor comes up, the work standard instantly increases from 10 to 99. Many people quit their job, and the 70-person team instantly becomes 26. All
people are gone. Luckin has recruited many college students from other places. Beijing has recruited about 60 people, none of whom are majoring in related majors. The company may think that academic qualifications are useful, but the location of the job requires negotiations with developers and properties. This group of college students did not understand hydropower at all, and finally Jiucheng left.
is at that time (end of 2018, early 2019), Luckin openedIt started to fend off food and clothing: the store’s rent was paid about 10 days late, and the employee’s salary was paid about 5 days late; the original store team was very luxurious, with a barista, and only one store manager later, and the rest were all college students.
I slowly found a problem. People in the new director faction of started to report various shops with rebates. For example, the newspaperman said, "This store has a transfer fee of 200,000", or "It needs 100,000 electricity to increase capacity. "Fee", the supervisor directly said "pay"; I have read the contract for the Palace Store, and it was signed at 1.8 million, plus an introduction fee of 360,000. These are the names for asking for money, from the initial black-box operation to the blatant report later.
Luckin was not bad in the early days. As long as you look at a piece of land, the company needs it for as much as possible, and the premium is 20% higher than the market. There is also a new store at that time. Suddenly, the supervisor couldn't tell it to open it. In the end, the rent only had to come back for one month, and the money was thrown away. The downstream suppliers of
Ruixing are also making money especially. At that time, someone approached me and said, "The plastic sealing sticker of Luckin Coffee, if you take this project down, I will give you 200,000 yuan a year." After
has been working for a year, I think this company is almost finished. has resigned.
In order to cater to the company’s assessment standards, employees can only be forced to cheat. Responsible for communicating "all normal" words. The customers of
also knew the news the next day, and the store directly broke the order. Originally, there were only more than 20 orders a day during the epidemic. Years ago, it was an average of 50 or 60 orders. That day, I and the store manager made a total of more than 170 orders.
There are almost 1/3 of the first free coffee in these lists. It is impossible to make money even thinking about it. Those who don’t drink coffee will also come to get a free cup of coffee. Those who have coupons in their hands will place orders with one discount, two discounts, and three discounts. Z36z can’t do so many things for one day. It feels like paying off a debt. If this state continues, I don't know how long it will last. The number of
Luckin Coffee's stores in an area will remain at about three, including six or seven part-time employees who work in shifts. In fact, the workload is not small.
Basically, in order to retain full-time employees, the company will promote full-time clerk to the position of deputy store manager within a few months. The part-time job is more casual. After the part-time job becomes regular, it is still billed by the hour. There is no performance commission, and only a little hourly salary will be added, from the original 20 yuan/hour to 30 yuan/hour. During the
epidemic, many stores were closed, and there were more than 200 store managers and deputy store managers who were idle at home. These people did not leave their jobs, but they were not paid. Everyone was in a very embarrassing state. Employees want to leave, afraid of not being able to find a job, and the company wants to fire people, but they are afraid of extraneous branches.
is actually quite messy inside the company, because the negative review rate of a store is directly related to the performance of the regional manager, so he has a lot of power. Basically, whoever wants to leave can be allowed to leave. For example, the deputy store manager of a store, because the lid of the trash can was not closed in time, he was directly demoted from the deputy store manager to an employee.
Many times, in order to meet the assessment requirements, employees will have to make some "fake" actions.
For example, Luckin has very strict inventory control. If the cups, coffee beans, etc. consumed in a day are too different from the system, once the data is submitted, the district manager will find it in half an hour.
Because the system will predict by itself, for example, the amount of milk in a cup of latte is 250ml, and the amount of milk in the system is 10L, the system will automatically deduct the amount of milk in a cup of latte. But the coffee machine needs to be debugged. At this time, the manager of the will adjust the milk volume of the latte to 240ml in order to match the milk volume with the system. In this case, the milk volume will be more than , so the inventory will be faked Circumstances, and such fraud is just for fear of "finding trouble from above." The
company also has strict restrictions on the production time of the drink. The order from the order to the scan code delivery must be completed within two minutes. This speed is actually very tight. If the order accumulates, the store manager will require the order to be completed within 20 seconds of the first arrival, meeting the company's regulations, but in fact the coffee is not finished, and the delivery staff can only wait when they come.
At the same time, the waste in the store is also very serious.If you make a glass of compound juice, you only need 10ml of some raw materials, but a can of raw materials has 1L, it will expire after two days of opening, all have to be discarded, but maybe only one or two cups of drinks will be sold within two days.
originally had a fixed standard for making a cup of coffee. In actual operations, customers often put forward demands, such as adding less sugar or adding more milk, but the company does not allow this. If we listen to customers, we can only be forced to make mistakes. When the company finds inconsistent inventory in the later period, the responsibility will be on the employees and performance will be deducted.
In addition, every day from opening a store to closing a store, from large to data inventory, to small to sanitary cleaning, we all strive for precision. As a result, the company revealed that the data was falsified, and employees would definitely find it incredible in their hearts, and they would pretend to be okay to the outside world and feel that they were against their conscience.
once found that the sales data was sold to outsiders, but it is difficult to find out who it was. Although it has no impact on our business, relevant upstream and downstream suppliers have been discussing it these days, and our internal employees will also discuss it separately in private. But I have no way to disclose any internal information. The final explanation of this matter will follow the company's official caliber.
Liu Jian was previously the vice president of the headquarters, and later became the COO. The department he manages is responsible for all revenue and expenditure-related businesses. It stands to reason that both the marketing department responsible for advertising business and the operating department responsible for data have nothing to do with , but in fact, he also has certain control rights. If we open a new store, we also need to go through the approval of the management department of Liu Jian. In the report of
short selling in Muddy Waters, I think the accusation of skipping orders is not credible. As far as I know, those evidences are not enough to prove that the company has done tricks in this regard. The order numbers on the Luckin Coffee receipts are random, and the receipt numbers do not represent the actual amount of cups sold. Many people buy a lot of cups with one order.
The WeChat group screenshot in the Muddy Water report is indeed our internal group, and the technician will notify the store manager to adjust the order number. However, there is no rule for the tracking numbers given, and each store is also different. For example, at a store in , the first cup order number in the morning was No. 200, but at noon the number was 400, but it might be transferred back to No. 200.
Our consumption model is different from that of Starbucks. Starbucks’ model is to place orders at the front desk, so their small ticket number will have the actual purchase amount of the product and the invoice information. However, Luckin places an order on the APP, and the actual amount is only reflected in the user's APP. The small ticket only displays the meal number and purchased product information, and does not involve the amount. The actual sales volume of and the proportion of self-pickup and delivery will be reflected in the system OA. The reason why
adopts this method of skipping the order number is that since 2019, someone will always investigate us by counting the order number and asking the shop assistant. has actually been investigating Luckin since 2018, and they have also used a similar method of counting orders, but there should be no cameras.
When investigating Muddy Waters last year, we did find that some store managers might sell data privately to outsiders. But this is also an unspoken rule in the industry. Although the company will strictly investigate, it is difficult to find out who sold it. Because sales data is public within the operating department, store managers, operating managers, operating department heads, and headquarters operating departments can all find these data in real time. They will adjust the product distribution ratio based on sales data on a daily basis.
Luckin’s operating departments are divided into regions. Each city is divided into about 20 regions. Each region will be equipped with a regional operation manager. Each regional operation manager manages 10-15 stores. There will be an exclusive WeChat group in the area, and the sales data of each store will be reported in the group every day. Leaders above the director level of the operation department can see the sales volume of all regions, while the regional manager can only see the order volume belonging to their own operating area, and the store manager can only see the order volume of their own store.
In fact, the entire operation department is only responsible for counting the number of orders and customer complaints. The performance of the store manager is only linked to these two. Most of Luckin's users consume by recharging discount coupons. The cash flow part can only be seen by the headquarters. The store manager has no authority, so the store cannot calculate the cash flowwater. At present, the current requirement of each store of is to sell more than 400 cups as far as possible.
After the incident, Party A raised questions. I am worried that the opening of the store will be affected.
Zhang Lin Ruixing Coffee Store Development Manager
I joined in 2018 and I am still working. Our team currently has more than 30 people, and the number of teams can double at peak times.
When I first joined the company, Luckin was madly opening stores, and then gradually compressed. During this process, our department changed three leaders, one at the end of 2018 and one at the end of 2019, and the situation of each leader was different.
For example, in 2018, the conditions for opening a store are relatively loose. It is easy to open a store in China World Trade Center or Wangjing. But after changing the leadership, the company began to consider more in 2019 and became more strict, such as not being able to choose some more expensive shops, and choosing more cautious areas.
Our leaders are basically people from China. The leaders of are actually the same, after all, they came from a new field. They have a framework in China, and it will be very fast to build a new company, but after entering a new field, many things have to be learned from scratch, and there will be some preliminary explorations.
Currently, there are about 400 stores in Beijing, which are basically saturated. Coupled with the impact of the epidemic, our current job is mainly to promote "Rui Instant Buy" and "Rui Cost-effective". There is no specific KPI.
Some stores will be closed after opening. There are probably dozens of stores closed in Beijing. For example, some stores that only do take-out, because the take-out fee is too expensive, if they only do take-out, there is no self-pickup or dine-in, the cost is too high, so the store will be moved to the first floor of the mall and other places. mention. One of our jobs is to stare at the Luckin App data. If an office building has a particularly high volume of takeaway orders, we can open the store to that building.
is basically not doing take-out shops in Beijing. The main business is take-out plus dine-in or self-pickup stores. At present, self-pickup stores should account for more than 90%. Self-pickup shops generally have only one bar, with an area of about 30-40 square meters, and the cost is relatively low. After seeing the Muddy Water report at the beginning of this year, I thought at that time that there may be more than one product in a single order, and there may be errors in the middle. In addition, Ruixing's image has been improving by leaps and bounds, and I did not expect it to be so bad. After the incident this time, the company just sent a group of e-mails, saying that the company has set up a special leading group to investigate this matter, but there has not been a meeting to arrange the follow-up of the matter. I estimate that after the holiday, the company may deal with these matters. There will be a meeting.
After seeing this news, we will discuss it in private. Z36z has been questioned by some Party A developers. I guess that the next one will have some impact on our store opening or machine installation , but now because The holiday, it is not yet clear how big the impact will be. Prior to this, Luckin's coffee machine installation effect was not bad. Last month, Beijing probably installed more than 100 machines, because it is relatively cheaper than other brands of machines on the market.
I think Luckin's company has developed too fast and lacks some time for accumulation. For example, opening a store should take time to raise it, because only after the store has been open for a certain period of time, can we know more clearly about all aspects of the store’s data and slowly explore profitability. But if it does not open quickly, it does not meet the company's standards, and we will still have a heavy KPI for opening a store before this year.
I personally think that the issue of fraud does not have a significant impact on the grassroots, the key lies in the company's board of directors. currently has no more dynamics within the company. I plan to wait and see after the holiday. I have no intention of leaving the job yet, but I am more worried about the future development of the company.
*The title map comes from Visual China. At the request of the interviewee, Liu Fei, Song Li, Ella, Keke, and Zhang Lin in the text are all pseudonyms.
** The above content was organized and formed by the parties’ narration to Ran Caijing. Ran Caijing has tried its best to verify the key details and tried its best to communicate with Luckin Coffee's official confirmation (as of the time of publication, no response has been received). Nevertheless, it is inevitable that there will be individual incompleteness or inaccuracy. People familiar with the matter are welcome to leave a message for criticism.
