Mixue
Mixue is the McDonalds meets Dollar General of bubble tea; it does not actually make its money selling cheap ice cream to consumers—it prints cash by operating as a massive, vertically integrated B2B supply chain, manufacturing ingredients for its 36,000+ franchisees.
Revenue
$3.4B
FY2024
Profitability
Highly Profitable
Division
Food and Beverage
Private (Pre-IPO)
Headquarters
Zhengzhou
Zhang Hongchao
Operating Model
What They Do
Mixue Bingcheng sells ultra budget freshly made drinks and ice cream. Its signature products are a 40-cent soft serve ice cream cone and a 55-cent fresh lemonade, targeting highly price sensitive consumers in rural China and Southeast Asia.
Who They Serve
Moat: Where They Win
The B2B Supply Chain Illusion
Over 99 percent of its stores are franchised. Mixue makes nearly its entire profit by manufacturing syrups, cups, and powders in its own massive factories and selling them at a markup to its franchisees.
Absolute Cost Leadership
Because they own the entire supply chain, they can enforce retail prices so low that competitors literally cannot match them without going bankrupt.
Viral Marketing
Its mascot, Snow King, and wildly catchy theme song generated billions of free, organic views on TikTok.
Business Model
Model Type
Revenue Streams
Profitability
Status
Highly Profitable
Revenue
$3.4B
FY2024
Division
Food and Beverage
Private (Pre-IPO)
Margin Profile
Operating a highly lucrative B2B model, their margins are completely insulated from consumer price sensitivity because they make their money selling ingredients directly to the franchise owners.
Catalyst: Why Now
As the Chinese economy slows down and consumers engage in consumption downgrading, Mixue is thriving. Its ultra budget drinks are entirely recession proof. It is currently expanding massively across Indonesia and Vietnam to become the dominant budget brand in the Global South.
Competitive Landscape
* Competitive threat index · China domestic market positioning
Western Analogs
Mental model only, not a 1:1 comparison
Founder
Zhang Hongchao
Founder & CEO
Zhang Hongchao started Mixue as a tiny shaved ice stall in Zhengzhou in 1997 while still a college student, borrowing seed money from his grandmother. His breakthrough came in 2006 when he reverse engineered an expensive foreign ice cream cone and sold it for pennies. Realizing the only way to sustain such low prices was to control the raw materials, Zhang and his brother relentlessly built a massive backend supply chain, cutting out all middlemen.