Luckin's largest Guangzhou store turns Lingnan-style 'art gallery' café into a National Day hotspot

During the National Day holiday, Guangzhou’s International Financial City Plaza saw a consumer-spending boom. A café in the district became a trending check-in spot for the holiday. Inside, some raised their phones to take photos, some dragged suitcases in to buy coffee, and others proudly showed off newly bought co-branded merchandise to companions. This store, which netizens call “less a coffee shop, more like stepping into an art gallery,” is Luckin Coffee’s largest store in Guangzhou by floor area, and one of the city’s most distinctive check-in destinations this holiday. When the Lingnan charm of this millennia-old commercial city meets the surging energy of a new consumer brand, a single cup of coffee is filled with the city’s everyday vitality and appeal.

The Lingnan-style café draws young visitors to check in

On the evening of October 3, Luckin Coffee at Financial City Plaza was still receiving a steady stream of visitors. Upon entering, the replica ancient-coin “Tongbao” floral-tile floor caught the eye. The space is very large; the second-floor lounge is often full. The reporter observed that most who came to “patronize” were young people, many raising phones to take photos. The store’s exterior feature wall—antique bronze with carved patterns—pairs Lingnan motifs with large glass curtain walls, echoing Financial City’s modern architecture and drawing young people to stop and capture the moment.

“I came all the way from Zhanjiang specially. I saw many people recommending this store on Xiaohongshu, saying it’s ‘less a coffee shop, more an art gallery,’ so I wanted to check in while visiting friends in Guangzhou for the holiday. The biggest surprise was that the prices are actually reasonable!” said young tourist Ms. Chen. Ms. Zhang, filming an outfit video for her child, told the reporter the space has a strong sense of aesthetics and good lighting, making for beautiful videos.

A Luckin staff member told the reporter that this Lingnan-flavored third space is the store’s signature, and the second-floor lounge attracts many young people who come specifically to check in. The reporter observed that, unlike ordinary pick-up stores, this “leisure” (Youxiang) store offers a more spacious rest area; many tourists order a coffee and take a short break here, overlooking the Financial City skyline. On the second floor, young people gathered in small groups—girls sipping coffee and chatting, boys playing games while enjoying their drinks.

During the holiday, Luckin teamed up with the popular IP “Siam Lip” to launch limited co-branded products—high-protein berry yogurt drinks, high-protein coconut-blue yogurt drinks, and lava cheese lattes—using a blend of “emotional marketing + product innovation” to drive holiday spending. Across Guangzhou, major business districts and coffee brands also rolled out their moves: in Yuexiu, local brand Yueka’s Jiandong store opened on October 1, bringing creative specialty drinks full of Cantonese flavor such as sea-salt yellow-pik green tea and Lingnan yellow-pik iced Americano.

Lingnan Aesthetics Meet Coffee Consumption

Walking into this store, one indeed temporarily forgets they are inside a coffee chain. With a total building area of about 400 square meters, it is also Luckin’s first “leisure” store in the core of Tianhe CBD. Underfoot are replica ancient-coin “Tongbao” floral tiles, the “round heaven, square earth” imagery carrying the totem of the millennia-old commercial city; overhead, dome chandeliers and themed documentary visuals set the scene; as the eye travels, elements of Guangzhou’s Manchurian-window patterns are woven into design details. The second floor is even more open—besides modular seating, a small meeting room suits light business talks, and a gallery-style circular display sits at its center, with Lingnan sailboat shapes circling slowly rotating coffee-bean exhibits, telling the story of trading voyages. A netizen commented that it is “less a coffee shop, more like stepping into an art gallery.”

According to the introductions, the store adopts the design concept of “Gathering Fortune Cube · Cosmopolitan Commercial Capital · Financial Ark,” deeply integrating Lingnan cultural genes with the ordered aesthetics of Financial City. Starting from the spiritual core of Lingnan culture, the design team used “spatial regularity and division” to create layered bays and depth, letting the modern coffee space form an inner resonance with the architectural language of the financial square. The store also reserves an “instant-enjoyment business offline display area” and a “pour-over zone,” offering a spatial experience far beyond the traditional pick-up stores on the market. The two-floor store is more open and exquisitely finished on the second level. Notably, its product prices are consistent with other stores, keeping its high cost-performance character.

Public reports show that as of July this year, Luckin’s store count in Guangdong surpassed 5,000, making Guangdong the first province nationwide where Luckin exceeded 5,000 stores in a single province. The Financial City leisure store is Luckin Coffee’s embodiment of its “one store, one strategy” localization approach, opened with a Lingnan-culture design concept.

Luckin’s move reflects the strong pull Guangzhou exerts on coffee brands. According to the “Guangzhou Coffee Industry Development White Paper (2026),” Guangzhou has over 8,000 coffee stores, ranking second nationwide and first in South China by number; in 2025 the full coffee industry chain generated an annual output value of 67 billion yuan, directly driving over 150,000 jobs. From January to May 2026, the Guangzhou Commodity Exchange’s green-coffee trading volume reached 12,409.92 tons—more than 10 times last year’s full-year total; in the first half of this year Guangzhou café revenue growth exceeded 9%. Tianhe District boasts the city’s leading coffee-consumption market, with 743 coffee stores and consumption density and industrial vitality ranking first citywide.

Policy is also continuously strengthening. This August, Guangzhou officially issued the “Several Measures to Promote the High-Quality Development of Guangzhou’s Coffee Industry,” providing systematic policy support for the coffee industry chain across dimensions such as industrial layout, brand cultivation, and talent introduction. It explicitly proposes “actively attract renowned domestic and international specialty coffee stores to settle and operate, building new urban coffee-culture landmarks” and “encourage parks, green spaces, public cultural venues, and tourist attractions to set up coffee stores, creating coffee blocks that integrate elements of excellent traditional Chinese culture.” The Luckin Financial City leisure store is precisely a response to this policy.

As an international consumption-center city, Guangzhou’s total retail sales of consumer goods growth ranked first among the five major international consumption-center cities, reaching 577.48 billion yuan in the first half of this year, up 2.9% year on year. Guangzhou is using coffee as a tie to connect traditional cultural heritage with modern consumption vitality. Luckin’s placement of its city-largest store here is undoubtedly another powerful vote of confidence in Guangzhou’s consumer-market vitality and urban appeal.

Text and photos / Guangzhou Daily New Flower City reporters: Zeng Fanying, Liu Liqin Guangzhou Daily New Flower City editor: Chen Qiulin

Reprint notice: This article is reprinted and translated from Guangzhou Daily New Flower City. The original Chinese title is “A new check-in spot for the National Day holiday: this Lingnan-style cafe in Guangzhou is going viral”. English version compiled by coffeeyo.com for overseas readers. Copyright of the original text and photos belongs to the author and the original publisher.