How ZUS Coffee and Luckin Coffee Own Their Customer Data, and What Every Brand Can Learn
Two coffee chains grew by making almost every cup a known customer. How their apps turn orders into data, how that data runs the business, and how any brand can start owning its customer relationships.
The short version
Walk past almost any ZUS Coffee and you will see more people holding their phones than queuing at the counter. That is by design. ZUS and China's Luckin Coffee both built their businesses around an app, so that almost every cup sold is tied to a known customer.
That gives them something most retailers rent from someone else: their own customer data. They know who drinks what, when and where, and they use it to decide the next offer, the next menu item and the next outlet.
You do not have to sell coffee, or even build an app, to apply the same idea. Here is how it works, and how any brand can start.
Two brands, one idea
ZUS Coffee opened its first outlet in Binjai, Kuala Lumpur, in 2019. It describes its model as "app-first, data-driven retail", passed its 1,000th outlet in 2025, and now operates in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Brunei and Thailand. As early as 2023, its app had already delivered more than 36 million cups.
Luckin Coffee went further still: its stores in China were built for app ordering, with no cashiers and little seating. By the end of 2025 it had more than 31,000 stores, around 98 million customers buying every month, and more than 450 million customers in total. It entered Malaysia in January 2025 and opened 70 stores there in its first year.
Luckin's story is not spotless. In 2020 it admitted to fabricating sales and was delisted from the Nasdaq. But the customer relationship it had built through its app was strong enough for the business to recover and keep growing.
What the app actually captures
The coffee is the product. The app is the relationship. Every order teaches the brand something it could never learn from a cash register.
Every order has a nameNot an anonymous cup at a counter, but Aina, a regular since 2023.
Exact taste, not guessesIced, caramel, less sugar. Thousands of these shape the next menu.
Habits, by the hourWeekday mornings, so the offer lands at 8am, not 3pm.
Demand, street by streetWhere orders cluster tells the brand where to open the next outlet.
What makes her come backWhich vouchers she uses, and which she ignores.
The data flywheel
The real advantage is not any single piece of data. It is how each order feeds the next decision.
Menu. ZUS uses app data to guide new drinks and local favourites in each market. A new flavour can be tested with the customers most likely to love it before it goes on every menu.
Outlets. Order patterns show where demand is already strong. ZUS has said its data helps it "be exactly where coffee drinkers need us".
Offers. Instead of the same discount for everyone, a morning regular gets a morning offer, and a lapsed customer gets a reason to return. Luckin is known for frequent, targeted app vouchers.
Cost. Orders placed in the app need fewer cashiers and less counter space, so stores can be smaller and open faster.
Rented customer, or owned customer?
Most brands today sell through someone else: a delivery app, a marketplace or a social platform. That brings reach, but the platform keeps the relationship.
Rented customer
- Orders come through a delivery app or marketplace
- The platform knows the buyer; you see an order number
- You pay commission on every sale
- To bring them back, you pay for ads again
- Decisions are based on sales totals
Owned customer
- Orders come through your app, site or WhatsApp
- You know the person, their taste and their habits
- Margin stays with you
- You can reach them directly, with consent, at no extra cost
- Decisions are based on what each customer does
You do not need to be a coffee chain
How to start owning your customer data
Give people a reason to identify themselves. ZUS gives points, vouchers and faster pickup. Yours could be warranty registration, member pricing or order tracking on WhatsApp. People share data when they get something useful back.
Bring every channel into one record. App, website, stores, marketplaces and WhatsApp should all point to the same customer. In Salesforce, Data 360 matches the same person across sources in real time.
Act on it, automatically. Data only pays off when it changes what the customer sees next. Marketing Cloud journeys and AI agents can send the right offer at the right moment without someone building every campaign by hand.
Earn trust and keep it. Ask for clear consent, explain what you use data for and make it easy to opt out, in line with Malaysia's Personal Data Protection Act. Owned data is only an asset while customers are happy to share it.
Where to start this quarter
Sources: The Edge Malaysia, Jan 2026; Vulcan Post, Jun 2023; Luckin Coffee FY2025 results; KrASIA / Nikkei Asia, Aug 2025; Business Today, Jan 2025. Figures as reported by the companies and the media. Luckin's FY2025 figures are unaudited. Telcowin has no commercial relationship with ZUS Coffee or Luckin Coffee, and the app shown is a fictional example.
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