Tea drink brands are entering the ice cream market. Who will be the most panicked this summer?

Tea beverage brands have collectively made "big moves" this summer by launching ice creams.

After the May Day holiday, Cha Ji Ba Wang launched 10 flavors of ice cream in 9 stores across the country. Among them, the "Boya Juexian" ice cream, which has the same flavor as the star tea beverage, drove the store's performance to increase month-on-month. Xue Wang Bing Cheng tested a limited edition ice cream cup in its flagship store, causing long queues. Gu Ming incorporated ice cream into lattes and set up a self-service area for ice cream toppings. Even earlier, Hey Tea launched several freshly made "Hey Gelato" in its laboratory stores. According to posts by netizens on social media, Hey Tea's independent ice cream store "gelato lab" has set up a fence in Qinghe, Beijing.

According to statistics from public data of Yilan Business, since the beginning of 2026, mainstream domestic tea beverage brands have collectively launched 31 new ice cream products.

We learned that a major reason behind this excitement is the explosion of the ice cream market. Driven by the expansion of chain freshly made stores, the ice cream market entered a period of rapid growth in 2025, which influenced people's consumption habits and attitudes towards this category and directly promoted the launch of ice cream by tea beverage brands.

The market is booming this year. Even brands unrelated to desserts, such as Xue Ji Roasted Nuts and Xi Jia De Dumplings, are launching ice creams. With so many participants entering the market, it may have a deeper impact on the industry landscape in the future.

In the next few months, people may be busy making choices in different stores. The China Meteorological Administration predicts that the temperature in most parts of the country will be higher than the same period in previous years from June to August this year. As summer gets hotter, the ice cream war has just begun.

01

Why are tea shops all starting to sell ice cream?

Chen Lin, the person in charge of the ice cream division of Sheng Ma Na Dairy, told us that the rise of gelato stores has, to a certain extent, promoted tea beverage brands to launch ice cream products.

On the one hand, these stores combine fresh milk with various high-quality tea leaves, fruits and other ingredients in an innovative way, which makes tea beverage brands see the possibility of integrating ice cream and tea beverages. On the other hand, the visual production and interactive experience in gelato stores have changed consumers' perception of traditional ice cream, meeting people's sense of novelty, emotional value and social needs.

Different from traditional ice cream, gelato's emphasis on fresh ingredients conforms to people's current consumption needs. To a certain extent, this is also the result of the perception cultivated by tea beverage brands through years of raw material upgrading. Italian gelato emphasizes manual craftsmanship, while Chinese gelato achieves scale expansion through automated and semi-automated machines.

The transformation in technology has met people's demand for new types of desserts, and freshly made ice cream stores exploded in 2025. Luo Haiping, the founder of Bobi Ice Cream, told us in an interview at the FBIF2026 Food and Beverage Innovation Forum that they opened half as many stores in the past year and a half as before. Narrow Door data shows that Mr. Wild Man added nearly 1,000 new stores in 2025.

This has directly promoted tea shops to launch ice cream.

From the perspective of product line logic, it is not complicated for tea shops to sell ice cream. "Don't think of ice cream as something mysterious. In the form of gelato, it's just a low-temperature cooking method, and the main ingredients are fresh milk, fresh fruits and high-quality nuts." Several ice cream industry practitioners told us.

The raw materials for tea beverages are also similar. In this case, tea shops only need to add equipment to produce ice cream.

Mr. Wild Man Ice Cream. Image source: Mr. Wild Man's official Xiaohongshu account

Taking Cha Ji Ba Wang as an example, an investor close to the brand told us that after the founding team of Cha Ji Ba Wang investigated ice cream, they thought they could also do it.

A franchisee of Cha Ji Ba Wang also told us that adding ice cream equipment to the existing stores only requires adding a few employees at most, and it is not difficult to operate. And ice cream can provide high emotional value. Compared with many beverages launched last year that didn't make a splash, he is more optimistic about the effect of ice cream.

For different tea beverage brands, the role of ice cream is also different. Some use it as a high-value-for-money product to attract customers, while others use it to increase the average customer spending.

Chen Lin said that affordable tea beverage brands will use ice cream as the core product to attract customers. Due to their extreme cost-effective strategy and the characteristics of the sinking market, they can quickly serve ice cream through standardization to meet the demand of customers who want to buy and leave immediately. The application scenarios of ice cream for these chain brands are basically independent ice cream cones, which are simple to operate, have standardized processes, and are suitable for high-traffic scenarios.

Mid - to high - end tea beverage brands, on the other hand, use ice cream as an important means to increase the average customer spending and product innovation. They emphasize the quality of raw materials and process innovation. For example, by integrating tea beverages and ice cream, they can enhance the value of the products. Therefore, the application scenarios of ice cream for mid - to high - end tea beverage brands are basically to add it as an ingredient to the top or bottom of tea beverages, which not only diversifies the products but also increases the average customer spending.

So consumers can see the price difference of ice cream among tea beverage brands.

For example, the limited ice cream cup launched in the flagship store of Xue Wang Bing Cheng is sold at 9 yuan per serving, while the ice cream cones sold in its stores all year round cost 2 - 3 yuan. Gu Ming's ice cream is sold at 4 yuan per serving when purchased separately. The ice cream of Hey Tea and Cha Ji Ba Wang is priced at 18 - 24 yuan. And for Cha Ji Ba Wang, you only need to add 2 yuan to get a "geelato tea" with ice cream, which is also attractive in terms of cost - effectiveness.

The target audiences of ice cream, milk tea and desserts largely overlap. Therefore, the emergence of ice cream can be regarded as a product to wake up consumers' sense of novelty after tea shops enter a bottleneck period of innovation, and it can undertake the overflowing traffic of tea beverages.

Data from the "2025 White Paper on China's Freshly Made Coffee and Tea Beverages" shows that the growth rate of the national tea beverage market in 2025 was maintained between 6.4% and 9.5%, and the growth rate slowed down significantly. The industry has shifted from incremental expansion to stock competition.

Tea beverage brands are in urgent need of novelty to maintain their momentum. After Hey Tea withdrew from the price war, it turned to developing "lab" stores with stronger brand effects. Gu Ming developed multiple product lines such as coffee and sugar water. Cha Ji Ba Wang launched multiple new products such as tea specials and tea lattes around the tea base.

The relatively high profit margin of ice cream may increase the performance of a single store in addition to providing novelty. The above - mentioned ice cream industry insiders told us that the gross profit margin of freshly made ice cream is about 68%. Luo Haiping, the founder of Bobi Ice Cream, also confirmed this data to us.

We also learned that the price of a freshly made ice cream machine is now about 50,000 - 100,000 yuan. Based on these data, if a tea shop invests 100,000 yuan to add a machine and sells ice cream at 18 yuan per serving, it can break even by selling 8,170 servings of ice cream without considering additional labor, water and electricity costs.

02

The positioning war of ice cream stores

For freshly made ice cream stores, the good news is that there are not many tea shops that have launched ice cream business yet, so they don't pose an immediate threat.

But there may be some anxiety.

On the one hand, there are hundreds of thousands of tea shops, far more than ice cream stores. Once ice cream becomes a standard item in every store, it will definitely divert consumers.

On the other hand, the consumer market for ice cream is not as large as that for milk tea for now. People can drink several cups of milk tea a day, but few people eat ice cream twice a day.

DQ Ice Cream. Image source: Dairy Queen's Dianping page

The business model of single - category ice cream stores is not very stable. A senior franchisee in the tea beverage industry told us that Mr. Wild Man currently has a gross profit margin of over 60%, but the unit price is still relatively high, and the loss of freshly made ice cream is large. The repurchase rate is not ideal. After tea shops enter the market, its performance will face considerable challenges - the continuous distribution of low - price group - buying vouchers and the attempt to add ice cream cakes, coffee, etc. are all preventive measures.

Narrow Door data shows that the growth rate of Mr. Wild Man's stores has slowed down significantly since 2026. As of now, only 142 new stores have been opened.

Dairy Queen, which is also in this field, has a similar trend. Narrow Door data shows that it added about 270 new stores in 2024 and 2025, but only 62 new stores have been opened so far in 2026. Not long ago, DQ's parent company, CFB Group, acquired the sugar water brand Xian Yu Xian. The company classifies sugar water and ice cream as the "big enjoyment" track. It may be trying to resist DQ's slowdown by enriching its brand matrix.

Of course, this is also related to the relatively small market size of the ice cream track. Luo Haiping, the founder of Bobi Ice Cream, once estimated that the upper limit of Bobi's stores across the country is about 3,000. If special channels such as scenic spots are included, it will be about 5,000.

The top priority for freshly made ice cream stores may be the positioning war, to quickly differentiate their positioning and scenarios from tea - based ice cream.

For example, when the taste difference is not significant, the brand that occupies consumers' minds first is more likely to make them form a habit.

In this regard, Mr. Wild Man has gained a certain first - mover advantage through high - profile brand marketing, emphasizing daily fresh - made products, late - night promotions, and rapid expansion.

Luo Haiping positions Bobi Ice Cream in terms of freshly baked waffles, multiple categories and cost - effectiveness. Narrow Door data shows (December 2025) that Bobi Ice Cream has about 1,072 stores, second only to DQ and Mr. Wild Man. Its expansion strategy is more focused on the sinking market, with nearly half of its stores in third - tier and lower - tier cities.

Its signature product is freshly baked waffle ice cream, and the price range of waffle products is 6 - 13 yuan. In addition, there are waffle ice cream bowls with fresh fruits, nuts and other toppings on the ice cream, which cost 16 - 17 yuan per serving, highlighting cost - effectiveness.

Judging from the store distribution and product form, Xue Wang Bing Cheng, which has low - price ice cream cones all year round, seems to be Bobi Ice Cream's main competitor. But Luo Haiping, the founder of Bobi, told us that most of Bobi's stores are located in shopping malls, and its main customers are children. There are significant differences in the two consumption scenarios: when children consume alone and use their own pocket money, they tend to choose Xue Wang Bing Cheng, which is more cost - effective. But when accompanied by parents who pay the bill, they prefer Bobi.

The way for Bobi to make a difference in the sinking market is to combine ice cream with freshly baked waffles and also launch freshly baked egg waffles.

Bobi Ice Cream. Image source: Bobi Ice Cream's official Xiaohongshu

He also said that currently, the focus of Bobi is on brand upgrading and product iteration, and it doesn't consider entering higher - tier cities for now. First, the current average customer spending of the brand is not suitable for bearing the store rent in higher - tier cities. Second, the sinking market has more development potential and space.

In the future, product innovation and scenario differentiation are also the focus of freshly made ice cream stores. The results will verify one thing: whether ice cream is a mature main category for chains or an accessory in the tea and dessert track.

If hundreds of thousands of tea shops enter the ice cream market, it will accelerate the expansion of the ice cream market and inspire more participants to join the competition.

After all, the upstream raw material industry of ice cream is already very mature, such as the necessary fresh milk. Especially when there is an oversupply of raw milk, future entrants don't need to build their own raw material bases and can get relatively favorable procurement prices, thus creating cost - effective products that can attract customers.

At the same time, the chain franchise industry has gradually matured. From the early street - side stores, to the explosion of new tea beverages, and now, a group of franchisees with resources, operation and management capabilities have emerged in China. This means that any brand has the possibility to achieve scale in a very short time - the current scales of Mr. Wild Man and Bobi Ice Cream have both benefited from this.

However, there are also challenges for tea shops to make ice cream.

The above - mentioned ice cream industry insiders told us that the characteristics of freshly made ice cream are, first, the freshness of the taste, and second, the large loss. Ice cream that has been made for more than 4 hours may have obvious taste differences. Some freshly made stores only sell a small number of flavors in the morning when the customer flow is low and start selling all flavors in the afternoon.

This reflects the difficulty in managing this business. Currently, there are only a few flavors of ice cream in Cha Ji Ba Wang stores every day, and the flavors change daily. A person close to Cha Ji Ba Wang told us that the brand also consciously controls the daily amount of ice cream raw materials. These can all be regarded as operations to reduce losses.