“Starbucks Plus Alibaba” Means Luckin Coffee Needs to Partner With JD or Tencent ASAP.

So Starbucks has launched a “new retail” strategic partnership with Alibaba. And in doing so they are leapfrogging to the front of digital and consumer China. Kudos. That’s impressive. And it’s pretty bad news for Luckin Coffee. The Alibaba-Starbucks deal, as announced, has three components: 1) A tie-in with Ele.me for delivery. The statement from […]

4 Things People Are Getting Wrong About Meituan-Dianping, China’s Food Delivery Giant (Pt 2 of 4)

I recently visited the Meituan-Dianping headquarters in Beijing – and I summarized my 3 take-aways in Part 1. In this part (2 of 4), I’m going to argue against some of the common statements I hear about Meituan. This is what I think, in my mostly humble opinion, a lot of people are getting wrong. […]