On April 23rd, Nestle Group revealed in its financial report that it had agreed to sell Blue Bottle Coffee to Centurium Capital. The transaction still needs to meet the usual prerequisites and is expected to be completed in the first half of 2026.
On April 23, in response to the reasons for selling Blue Bottle Coffee and the businesses covered by the sale, a reporter from Nanduwan Financial News Agency inquired about the situation with Nestle Group. The relevant person in charge of its headquarters responded that there was no more information to disclose. The reporter also inquired about the reasons for the acquisition and the acquisition price from Dazheng Capital. The relevant person in charge of Dazheng Capital only confirmed the authenticity of the acquisition and did not directly respond to the reporter's interview.
Nestle Group confirms sale of blue bottle coffee
As early as December 2025, there were rumors in the market that Nestle Group was collaborating with investment bank Morgan Stanley to evaluate future development options for its Blue Bottle coffee business, including the possibility of selling the business. At the time, insiders said that the estimated valuation for the sale of Blue Bottle Coffee was expected to be lower than the valuation of $700 million at the time of Nestle's acquisition. Shortly thereafter, it was revealed that Dazheng Capital was considering bidding. In March of this year, LatePost, a self media outlet, announced that Dazheng Capital had acquired the Blue Bottle Coffee brand and its global stores from Nestle, while Nestle would retain the coffee machine and capsule business of Blue Bottle Coffee.
According to Caixin's report, Nestle hopes to sell all shares of Blue Bottle Coffee for $700 million, while Dazheng Capital will fully acquire it for less than $400 million.
Blue Bottle Coffee was founded in California, USA in 2002 by clarinetist James Freeman. The brand is positioned as a premium coffee and claims to insist on using fresh coffee beans to make coffee. The store usually adopts a minimalist design. In September 2017, Nestle Group acquired a majority stake in Blue Bottle Coffee. According to Nestle Group's announcement at the time, in 2016, Blue Bottle Coffee had only 29 stores in the United States and Japan. After the acquisition, Nestle Group stated that Blue Bottle Coffee will maintain operational independence, and the current management and employees will retain minority stakes.
Image source: Xiaohongshu @ BlueBottleCoffee Blue Bottle Coffee
After Blue Bottle Coffee left the US market, its first country of entry was Japan, where it opened its first overseas store in Tokyo in February 2015, and later entered South Korea and Hong Kong, China. In February 2022, Blue Bottle Coffee's first store in mainland China opened by the Suzhou River in Shanghai. The first store was located in a historic building that was originally the senior staff dormitory of Yutong Flour Mill. On the first day of opening, there was a long queue at the Blue Bottle Coffee store. Some consumers claimed that the queue would take 3 to 6 hours. The coffee, which originally cost an average of 40 yuan per cup, was inflated by scalpers to hundreds of yuan.
After entering the mainland Chinese market, compared to other coffee brands, Blue Bottle Coffee is more cautious in opening stores. In just over four years, Blue Bottle Coffee has only opened 16 stores in mainland China, including 13 stores in Shanghai. Its pricing strategy has not been affected by the price wars in recent years, with most coffee being priced at 40 yuan or more. On a global scale, Blue Bottle Coffee has stores in the United States, Japan, South Korea, China (mainland and Hong Kong), and Singapore. According to Nestle's official website, it has over 100 stores worldwide.
Luckin Coffee may expand its high-end segment with Blue Bottle Coffee
Dazheng Capital, which was accused of taking over Blue Bottle Coffee, was founded in 2017 as an industrial investment institution, and its more well-known identity is the controlling shareholder of Luckin Coffee.
Li Hui, Chairman and CEO of Dazheng Capital, will assume the position of Chairman of Luckin Coffee in April 2025. In February 2026, Dazheng Capital completed an internal acquisition of 136.2 million B-class common shares of Luckin, adjusting its shareholding to 23.28% and holding 53.6% of the voting rights.
Unlike Blue Bottle Coffee, Luckin Coffee's positioning is affordable coffee, with most of its drinks priced between 9.9 yuan and 16 yuan.
In the coffee industry, Luckin Coffee's performance ranks first, and the number of stores has exceeded 30000. However, while its revenue continues to grow, its profitability has been under pressure since the second half of last year. In the fourth quarter of 2025, Luckin Coffee's revenue increased by 32.9% year-on-year to 12.777 billion yuan, while its net profit decreased by 39.09% year-on-year to 851 million yuan. This is also the second consecutive quarter of net profit decline for Luckin Coffee. Regarding this, Luckin explained that it is mainly affected by seasonality, including changes in the subsidy strategy of food delivery platforms and the comprehensive impact of cup volume structure. However, this situation is also in line with Luckin's overall performance prediction. In the fourth quarter, due to the surge in takeaway orders, Luckin's delivery expenses increased by 94.5% year-on-year to 1.631 billion yuan.
In the view of Lin Yue, a management analyst at Lingyan Consulting, the acquisition of Blue Bottle Coffee by Dazheng Capital aims to strengthen the brand matrix of the coffee empire, forming a combination of "high-end boutique+mass cost-effectiveness" between Blue Bottle and Luckin Coffee. At the same time, with Luckin Coffee's powerful digital system, resources can be integrated and efficiency can be improved in site selection, supply chain, and operation management.
Lin Yue once analyzed to reporters from Nanduwan Financial News Agency that Dazheng Capital has the willingness and strength to accelerate the expansion of Blue Bottle stores, but this acquisition will also face many challenges. How to balance the "slow" of Blue Bottle and the "fast" of Luckin, and how to integrate resources between two brands with completely different positioning and genes. Especially, as a representative of premium coffee, Blue Bottle Coffee emphasizes "hand brewing" and "niche", and whether it can cooperate with the "rapid expansion" required by capital will be a problem. In addition, with too many stores, the scarcity of the brand will be diluted. How to maintain profitability and high-level service for the stores will be a difficult point for Dazheng Capital after taking over.
Reported by: Zhan Danqing, reporter from Nandu Wancai Society
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