Centurium Capital, the main backer of China's Luckin Coffee, has reportedly agreed to purchase Blue Bottle Coffee's global café operations from Nestlé for less than US$400 million, according to reports from Jiemian News and other Chinese media outlets starting March 4, 2026. Nestlé will retain Blue Bottle's consumer packaged goods business, including instant coffee and ready-to-drink products. Neither party has publicly confirmed the deal as of March 6.
Centurium Capital, which holds a 23.28% stake in Luckin Coffee with over 53% of voting rights under chairman Li Hui (appointed May 2024), has reached an agreement to acquire Blue Bottle's physical café locations worldwide. The deal value is reported at just under US$400 million. Nestlé, which bought a majority stake (about 68%) in the U.S. specialty coffee brand in 2017 for around $425-500 million (valuing it at over $700 million), will keep the consumer products segment.
This potential transaction reverses a mid-2010s trend of multinationals snapping up premium roasters. Luckin Coffee, founded in Beijing in 2017 and dubbed 'China's Starbucks,' expanded rapidly, listed on Nasdaq in 2019, faced a 2020 sales fabrication scandal leading to delisting and restructuring, but recovered to surpass Starbucks in China by 2023. By end-2025, it operated about 31,040 stores globally (30,880+ in China, 160 overseas), with Q4 2025 sales of 12.8 billion yuan, up 33% year-on-year.
Blue Bottle, known for third-wave coffee, entered China in 2022 but struggled with just 15 stores in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou. Globally, it had around 140 locations across six countries as of August 2025.
The acquisition could give Luckin an established premium brand to complement its value-oriented model and support U.S. and East Asian expansion, avoiding the costs of building one anew. Jiemian News called it a 'symbolic merger' of premium global and scale-focused Chinese players, potentially reshaping Blue Bottle's strategies. The industry awaits official confirmation.
