Mixue Ice Cream & Tea

Mixue Ice Cream & Tea is a Chinese ready-to-drink chain that 暗涌Waves describes less as a consumer brand than as a supply-chain company in disguise: roughly 98% of its revenue comes from selling ingredients, packaging, and equipment to its franchisees, not from collecting franchise fees or profit-sharing . Founded in 1997 as a small shaved-ice shop in Zhengzhou, it has grown to more than 46,000 stores globally—surpassing McDonald's and Starbucks in outlet count—while keeping prices at RMB 5–8 per cup and net margins around 18.7% .

The model rests on extreme vertical integration. Mixue sources directly from farmers (notably Sichuan's Anyue lemons for its bestselling lemonade), processes them in self-built factories across five Chinese provinces, and distributes through its own 27-warehouse logistics network, which reaches 90% of county-level regions within 12 hours and is free for franchisees . Core ingredients are 100% self-produced, making it the most vertically integrated player in China's ready-to-drink sector .

Hillhouse Investment led the company's only disclosed funding round—a roughly RMB 2 billion pre-IPO financing in December 2020 alongside Meituan Longzhu and CPE Source Peak . Mixue listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in March 2025, pricing at a 23x P/E comparable to Luckin and drawing HKD 1.84 trillion in retail subscriptions . The company plans to deploy 66% of IPO proceeds to deepen its supply chain and expand overseas, where it already operates localized warehouses in four Southeast Asian countries .