China’s Cotti Coffee launches in Australia with Sydney outlet

Customers queuing at Cotti Coffee’s Sydney store | Photo credit: Cotti Coffee

Cotti Coffee is set to give many Australian consumers their first taste of Chinese branded coffee shop culture after opening a take-away only store in Sydney. 
 

Alongside a standard espresso-based menu, Cotti Coffee is offering a wide range of flavoured coffee beverages that are highly popular in the Chinese market, including Rice Milk and Pampas Blue lattes, coconut-infused coffee and Grapefruit Sparking Cold Brew. 

Cotti Coffee joins café operators D&N Coffee, Vy Vy Garden Café, Café Nho, Café Noi, Nha Trang Café and Café Ngon in Sydney’s Cabramatta suburb, dubbed ‘Little Saigon’ due to its strong Vietnamese community. 

As with other recent international debuts, Cotti Coffee offered week-long promotional discounts of around 40% at the Sydney store. Long blacks were reduced from AU$4.00 ($2.60) to AU$2.50 ($1.62), while lattes were down from AU$7.00 ($4.54) to AU$3.90 ($2.53). 

However, Cotti’s standard pricing is similar to Australian market leader McCafé and premium-focused Starbucks, which retail long blacks for AU$4.60 ($2.98) and AU$4.00 ($2.60) respectively. 

Founded by former Luckin Coffee executives Charles Lu and Jenny Qian in October 2022, Cotti Coffee operates more than 6,000 stores in China and has entered 11 international markets since making its overseas debut in South Korea in August 2023. 

The Australian debut follows a busy December 2023 for the convenience-focused coffee chain, which saw it open first stores in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. 

Cotti Coffee operates both single-store and regional franchise models in international markets. It opts for a revenue and profit-sharing arrangement with franchisees rather than charging upfront fees, which it says ‘shares risks and maximises each party’s strengths’.