While the entire industry is still racing to open new stores for expansion, Mixue is working on something else.

Written by | Chen Xi

In a far from easy cycle for the tea drink industry, Mixue Ice City has released a financial report that exceeded market expectations:

In 2025, it recorded revenue of 33.56 billion yuan and net profit of 5.93 billion yuan, up 35.2% and 33.1% year on year respectively.

By the end of 2025, Mixue Ice City had 44,000 domestic stores, while Lucky Coffee had more than 10,000 stores, making it one of the five coffee chain brands with over 10,000 outlets. A total of 13,300 new stores were added throughout the year.

This is a performance report against the backdrop of intensifying industry differentiation.

In 2025, the freshly made tea drink industry entered a period of adjustment. Data from Zhaimen Canyan shows that more than 25,000 milk tea shops closed down over the past year. On the other hand, competition in the coffee track intensified, with a net increase of about 20,000 new stores within one year. Consumers' preferences are also changing, shifting from focusing on "good taste" to paying more attention to "cost-effectiveness".

In such a market environment, Mixue withstood the changes on one hand, upgraded its products and continued to expand while maintaining low prices, and on the other hand seized the opportunity of the expanding coffee market to adjust its sub-brand Lucky Coffee, which reached the 10,000-store milestone last year.

Scale and the number of new stores opened are the most intuitive data indicators in the competition of the tea and coffee track in the past few years. But it is already obvious today that stores that open fast also close equally fast. Compared with the number of stores, another set of data in Mixue's financial report deserves more attention: "A net increase of 6,474 franchisees throughout the year."

According to sources close to Mixue's management, Mixue Ice City did not relax its franchise approval standards in 2025, with the pass rate remaining below about 5%. The targets are still operators with physical business experience and the ability to invest energy in management for a long time. For example, young entrepreneurs and husband-and-wife store operators are the priority targets favored by Mixue.

This means that after the industry has gone through multiple rounds of price wars, food delivery wars and store closure waves, a group of more rational franchisees have begun to make new choices. Every new franchisee makes a judgment with real money, which is a re-vote after verification.

The result shows that this choice is not blind. The financial report shows that 2,527 global franchised stores of the Mixue Group closed in 2025, which was mainly due to the company's strengthened active operation adjustment and optimization of overseas stores last year. This is the total of the group's three brands, accounting for only 4.2% of the total number of stores at the end of the year, and the store closure rate is still one of the lowest in the industry. When peers are under pressure in the price war, Mixue has stabilized the profitability of its stores by virtue of its supply chain advantages.

For frontline operators, the ability to make money for a long time is more important than the ability to expand rapidly. Therefore, this financial report cannot be simply summarized as "scale growth".

01 New Mixue CEO takes office, says the management needs to "repair the roof on a sunny day"

At the performance briefing on March 24, Mixue's management mentioned that the company's key focus in 2026 is to improve the quality of store operations, increase investment in infrastructure and operation systems, and expand the store scale steadily and prudently.

In other words, the expansion pace will slow down, but investment will not decrease.

The speaker was Zhang Yuan, the new CEO of Mixue Group. On the same day as the financial report was released, Mixue announced a major management adjustment: Zhang Hongfu, the former group CEO and founder, will serve as the group's co-chairman; Zhang Yuan, the former group CFO, will take over as CEO. Zhang Yuan joined Mixue Ice City as CFO in 2023 and has long-term experience in the consumer track. Zhang Hongfu will continue to participate in major decisions of the group and devote more time to the group's sustainable development strategy.

When Mixue just broke through the 10,000-store scale in 2020, the management realized that to maintain such a scale, it must make heavy asset investment in the supply chain to ensure stable raw material supply and adhere to low prices. Therefore, in that year, Mixue introduced its only round of external investment, which was mainly used to invest in the supply chain.

To understand Mixue's competitiveness, the supply chain is unavoidable. This layout started very early. In 2012, Mixue established a central factory, making it one of the first companies in the tea drink industry to carry out standardized production.

Since 2012, Mixue has started to build multiple production bases, purchased more than a dozen kinds of fruits in large quantities from producing areas, processed them into frozen fruit cans in its own factories, and then distributed them to stores across the country through its self-built cold chain logistics system. All these services are free of charge for franchisees, which is also the biggest difference between Mixue Ice City and its peers.

McDonald's has 45,000 stores around the world. Its most important competitiveness is the cost advantage established by decades of food industrialization, and it is a representative of adhering to the cost leadership strategy in the competitive theory of management master Michael Porter. McDonald's saves money in every link. For example, to save the stirring time at the store end, it even spent tens of millions of dollars to develop the spoon for McFlurry (although the spoon was finally phased out due to environmental commitments).

Mixue Ice City is accomplishing the same thing in China. The management has a statement on its strategy: "Focusing on the three main lines of supply chain enhancement, brand IP construction, and store operation optimization, to achieve a 'trinity total cost leadership'" - that is, to reduce the overall cost with systematic capabilities, which requires long-term, forward-looking heavy asset investment. In essence, it uses industrialization capabilities to support efficiency and scale.

In the past few years, this system has continued to evolve, gradually upgrading from the normal temperature supply chain to a cold chain system. The goal is to ultimately achieve consumption upgrading in products, so that new store products can use fresh fruits, freshly squeezed juice and new milk, while still maintaining the unit price of 6-8 yuan. This is undoubtedly a huge project, which Mixue internally calls the "Real Fresh & Pure" strategy.

Zhang Yuan mentioned at the meeting that when the group responded to market changes in 2025, it realized that more forward-looking investment is needed, "we need to look up at the road, and repair the roof on a sunny day".

This sentence basically explains why Mixue continues to increase investment at the current stage.

At the beginning of 2026, Mixue began to replace the normal temperature jam in its core product "Fresh Orange Soda" with frozen compound orange juice. The follow-up plan for this year is to promote the upgrading of more product raw materials and fully introduce cold fresh milk. The performance briefing disclosed that the group has planned a total strategic investment of about 18-2 billion yuan in 2026, of which 1.4 billion yuan will be used for in-depth transformation of the domestic supply chain - this is a typical long-term investment: it has a long cycle and slow return, but once formed, it will be reflected in the cost structure and product power.

At the same time, Mixue also plans to make up for a short board: digital capabilities. With the increase in the proportion of food delivery and the migration of orders to online channels, the operation mode of stores is also changing, which puts forward new requirements for efficiency.

Zhang Yuan mentioned that the company will gradually precipitate users through the construction of the membership system and self-owned channels, and at the same time introduce more intelligent digital tools at the store end, such as intelligent liquid dispensing equipment and store management systems, to improve operation efficiency and reduce labor dependence.

This is more like an extension of the existing system - to make the capabilities built on scale and supply chain continue to operate in the new consumption environment.

After the price war becomes the norm and products tend to be homogeneous, the focus of industry competition has actually changed. It has shifted from competing for expansion speed to competing for who can make good products and control costs while maintaining low prices. In this context, the supply chain is no longer just a back-end capability, but begins to directly affect the operating results of stores. That's why Mixue chose to continue investing at this stage instead of shrinking.

02 Snow King IP, from marketing cost to strategic asset

If the supply chain solves the problems of cost and efficiency, then the brand solves the problem of why consumers keep choosing you.

In January 2025, Mixue Ice City opened its "Global Headquarters Flagship Store" near Zhengzhou East Railway Station. The location selection intention is very obvious - it is a city's passenger flow hub with huge daily average passenger flow, facing not only Zhengzhou consumers but also tourists. The peripheral products in this store are the richest among all Mixue Ice City stores so far, focusing on the consumption experience of "buying a lot for 100 yuan".

After opening, this flagship store quickly became a regional consumption landmark. During the three-day Qingming Festival holiday, its cumulative turnover exceeded 1 million yuan; in July of the same year, the highest single-day turnover exceeded 600,000 yuan. By the end of 2025, Mixue had opened such flagship stores in 23 cities including Zibo, Baoding, Chongqing and Hangzhou.

In the past year, the Snow King IP has made progress in both commercialization and content creation. In May, the animation "Snow King is Here" was launched in 5 language versions including English, French and Portuguese. Official data shows that the revenue of Snow King cultural and creative peripheral products accounts for more than 80% of the total revenue of the Zhengzhou headquarters flagship store. This means that the Snow King IP is no longer just a marketing cost department, but has begun to have a clear growth and monetization path. The financial report shows that Mixue Ice City's sales expenditure accounted for only 6% of revenue in 2025, far lower than the industry average.

The enrichment of derivatives has made the business model of the flagship store healthier. Previously, Mixue promoted the franchising of flagship store formats, but the store model that only relied on beverage sales faced considerable operating pressure. With the support of IP peripheral products, the profitability of single stores has been improved.

In the entire catering industry, such a super IP is rare. The general public consumers can get unique emotional value from Snow King: not everyone can afford Disney's peripheral products, but the vast majority of people can afford Snow King's fridge magnets and tumblers.

Today, such an IP image may be more valuable. At present, homogeneous competition has become the norm in the tea and coffee industry. When product tastes and store models tend to be similar, emotional value will be a rare differentiation point.

Mixue is obviously aware of this. The next step is to build "city-themed parks". In February 2026, the "Snow King Park" was listed as a key supported project in Zhengzhou, which is planned to be located near Mixue Ice City's global headquarters near Zhengzhou East Railway Station. According to the recruitment information, Mixue is recruiting performance coordinators with working experience in Disney or Universal Studios, and peripheral product coordinators familiar with Pop Mart's operation logic. This is a small indoor park with multiple indoor themed experience zones planned, which is Mixue's preliminary exploration in the park scenario. At the same time, the Snow King feature film is also under planning. These actions are not fast-paced, but the direction is consistent: to turn the IP from a series of marketing activities into a long-term asset that can be continuously accumulated.

03 Second growth curve: Lucky Coffee is fully upgraded, focusing on professional coffee

Putting all the previous actions together, you will find that they are actually connected: the supply chain solves the efficiency problem, the Snow King IP solves the demand problem, and the new business answers the same question - where else can this set of capabilities be extended.

2025 was a breakout year for the coffee track. Lucky Coffee began to stand out, with the number of stores exceeding 10,000 and becoming one of the five coffee chain brands with over 10,000 outlets in China. Essentially, it is still the collaborative reuse of Mixue Group's supply chain capabilities - the coffee roasting line of the Hainan factory was put into operation last year, which provided the foundation for the development of Lucky Coffee.

The development pace of Lucky Coffee is a typical "Mixue pace" - slow and steady. From 2023 to 2024, Lucky Coffee devoted more energy to internal work, re-polishing its products, store formats and operation methods. Entering 2026, how Lucky Coffee will coordinate with the main brand Mixue Ice City has become the focus of the industry.

Mixue's answer is "dual brands, coordinated development". Mixue Ice City focuses on freshly made tea drinks, with coffee as a menu supplement; Lucky Coffee is positioned as a "professional brand focusing on freshly ground coffee". The two share the same supply chain, but move in different directions, reuse underlying capabilities, and do not form direct competition at the brand level.

The results of the adjustment have gradually emerged, and the pace of product upgrading of Lucky Coffee has accelerated significantly recently.

First, hand-brewed coffee priced at 10-16 yuan was launched in the Zhengzhou flagship store. The latte option with Yuexianhuo milk was also put on the menu - the regular 350ml cup is priced at 12 yuan, and the large 700ml cup is priced at 16 yuan, which is 2 yuan higher than the original formula latte (10 yuan). In March this year, Lucky Coffee selected two cities, Jinan and Heze, for pilot operation, launching Yuexianhuo cold fresh milk with a shelf life of 19 days and fresh coffee beans with a shelf life of 60 days.

At the same time, 5 cities including Guangzhou, Xi'an, Jinan, Beijing and Chongqing launched special mixed drinks, such as the 13-yuan pineapple special drink made of Ethiopian single-origin beans. The reason why premium beans can be sold at low prices still relies on the coffee roasting line put into operation last year at the Hainan factory.

All kinds of actions point to the same signal: Lucky Coffee is shifting from "high quality at affordable prices" to "premium quality at affordable prices". In the second half of 2025, it announced its expansion into first and second-tier cities. At present, most of Lucky Coffee's stores are still in third-tier and lower-tier cities, but the focus of future expansion is shifting upward.

At the performance meeting, Pan Guofei, CEO of Lucky Coffee China Region, summarized the core strategy for 2026 into four words: "improving quality and increasing efficiency". On the product line, it will launch a series of special mixed drinks for testing, and upgrade raw materials to fresh milk and fresh fruits; in terms of store expansion, it will strengthen the layout in high-tier cities and also enter Hong Kong and Macao. There are also investment plans of hundreds of millions of yuan in brand marketing, mini-programs, space experience and other aspects.

If Lucky Coffee is an extension in the existing category, then the fresh beer brand Fulujia is more like a cross-category attempt. This business was originally just a single product in convenience stores. After three years of polishing the store model, it began to focus on the draft fresh beer track in 2025, selling a cup for 6-10 yuan. At the end of the year, Mixue completed the strategic acquisition of Fulujia. As of December 1, 2025, it had