With a monthly revenue of over 500,000, this brand that gained popularity with its signature "Chaebol Iced Fruit Juice" has opened 150 stores.

Chaoshan's hidden gem — ice-blended fruit juice has garnered widespread attention this autumn and winter.

Puren Conscience Juice, a brand originating from Hangzhou, has opened 150 stores, with an average daily revenue of 5,000 yuan per store, and monthly revenue exceeding 500,000 yuan for its outlets in Changsha, Chengdu, Chongqing and other cities.

This time-honored category that has been popular in Chaoshan for decades is being reinvented from scratch.

A new ice-blended fruit juice brand emerges in Hangzhou with over 150 outlets opened

Walking through shopping malls in Hangzhou in the summer of 2026, it is hard to miss this store: its visual design features trendy Korean-style elements, with log wood and yellow-blue color matching, fresh fruit display cabinets placed side by side with the slogan "Only sell perfect-score fruit juice".

Soft lights fall on fresh fruits, paired with Korean-style posters, making it look more like a "trendy juice brand store" from a distance rather than a traditional beverage shop, which stands out sharply among all surrounding stores.

All products contain no tea, mainly featuring freshly cut and freshly blended ice-blended fruit juice, supplemented by fruit and vegetable juices and yogurt smoothies, focusing on health, naturalness and refreshing taste, with the price of a single cup around 20 yuan, and the average price of takeaway cups at 15 yuan.

The menu looks like a world map: Jeju Island ugly tangerine, Seoul chaebol litchi, Busan golden corn, UAE royal date, Malaysian green apple chia seed... The appearance and naming of the products are inherently viral, and there are many positive comments such as "life-saving drink", "spiciness relieving magic weapon", "extremely delicious" on social platforms.

The brand is called Puren Conscience Juice (its store type in shopping malls is named Puren Perfect Score Juice). Founded in 2024, it did not start large-scale expansion until the second half of 2025. In just over a year, it has opened more than 150 stores in markets including Zhejiang, Chongqing, Sichuan and Hunan.

"The average daily actual revenue of all national stores is about 5,000 yuan, there are more than 40 stores with daily actual revenue exceeding 8,000 yuan, and many stores in Chongqing, Chengdu, Changsha and other cities have a monthly revenue of more than 500,000 yuan," revealed Xixi, the founder.

This figure is not that stunning in the golden age of tea drinks, but it is impressive enough this year. According to data from Zhaomen Canyan, there are about 383,100 tea drink stores across China in 2026, with more than 110,000 stores closed within a year, and the store closure rate reaches 16.2% — which means that 1 out of every 6 stores has ceased operation.

In the fiercely competitive stock market, how did this new brand stand out from the crowd?

Reinvent fruit juice with the tea drink model, Puren got three things right

Xixi told Kamen that she was still studying at university in Hangzhou in 2024. Out of her love for Korean culture, she came up with the idea of making healthy fruit and vegetable drinks. With a try-it-out attitude, she opened a street-side store near Hangzhou East Railway Station.

"I never expected the business to be so good." It was not until mid-2025 that she officially took this business as her career, when the Seoul chaebol ice-blended fruit juice was launched and its popularity soared, with the Changsha store receiving overwhelming orders, which made her see the huge market demand of this category.

As for the reason for its counter-trend growth this year, Xixi believes that Puren has done three things correctly.

1. Tea drink-oriented transformation of fruit juice, reinvent "freshly squeezed fruit juice" with ice-blended fruit juice

"The health benefits of fruits are recognized worldwide, but in the ready-to-drink beverage industry, both freshly squeezed fruit juice and ice-blended fruit juice are trapped in regional markets, with no national-level brand emerging," Xixi analyzed.

The solution Puren found is "making ice-blended fruit juice in the way of tea drink operation".

The development of the tea drink industry over the past decade has formed a mature product R&D logic: from tea base, milk base to fruits, toppings and syrups, new products are continuously developed through the combination of different elements. The core of this logic is to turn the processing of a single raw material into a combination of rich tastes.

Puren Conscience Juice has introduced this logic into the fruit juice sector.

Take the hit Jeju Island ugly tangerine ice-blended fruit juice as an example: in addition to fresh ugly tangerine, syrup and ice cubes, yogurt and orange peel dices are also added to enhance the layered taste. The combination of ugly tangerine and yogurt brings the sweet-sour flavor and thick texture, apple with chia seed adds more taste layers, and mixed berries create complex flavors through the combination of multiple fruits.

Traditional fruit juice evaluations usually focus on basic dimensions such as "fresh", "sweet" and "sour"; when ice-blended fruit juice adds elements such as smoothies, yogurt, fruit pulp and chia seeds, consumer evaluations begin to involve richer experiences such as taste layers, grainy texture, and sweet-sour balance.

Essentially, this is an arbitrage between the "product language" of tea drinks and the "raw material base" of fruit juice. This also means that ice-blended fruit juice can have more product expansion space just like milk tea.

2. Source raw materials from fruits all over the world, translate "eating memory" into a cup of smoothie

If the tea drink-oriented transformation of fruit juice solves the problem of product R&D logic, the development of global fruit flavors provides richer product materials for ice-blended fruit juice.

In Puren's product line, fruits are not selected based on "what sells well", but according to "how people in the origin place eat this kind of fruit".

Jeju Island ugly tangerine ice-blended fruit juice is the brand's anchor product, with the fruit juice content marked as high as 99%, and orange peel dices added at the bottom of the cup to bring a chewy experience, upgrading the experience of "eating tangerine" from "drinking tangerine juice" to "chewing a peeled tangerine".

The royal date ice-blended fruit juice line is more typical: date is a staple-level energy source in Middle Eastern diets, with high sweetness and dense texture. Combined with smoothies, it presents a rich taste and exotic recognition, and has derived multiple variants such as avocado date ice-blended juice and mixed berry date ice-blended juice.

The logic behind this practice is not simply "imported fruits", but to extract the "eating memory" of a certain fruit in its native food culture, and translate it into the form of a cup of smoothie.

3. Store model innovation: make profits through revenue sharing instead of selling materials

Equally noteworthy as product innovation is the store model of Puren Conscience Juice.

According to Xixi, Puren currently has 75 directly-operated stores and 75 joint-operation stores. The cooperation model is not the traditional simple franchise: the headquarters does not earn its main income by selling equipment and materials, but directly shares the revenue of the stores.

The core of this model is to form a more direct connection between the headquarters and the stores.

In the traditional franchise system, the headquarters usually obtains income through franchise fees, supply chain supply, equipment and other services, and the revenue relationship between the headquarters and the stores often does not fully depend on the operating results of a single store.

Under the revenue sharing model, the store's sales performance will directly affect the headquarters' revenue, which will prompt the brand to pay more attention to site selection, product R&D, marketing activities, staff training and store operation, instead of only completing the store opening task.

This makes the expansion logic of the stores shift from "how many stores are opened" to "how many stores are well operated".

Ice-blended fruit juice that has been sold in Chaoshan for more than 30 years, is it welcoming its category dividend period?

Ice-blended fruit juice is actually not a new category.

In Chaoshan, it has been sold for 30 years, and is known as "Chaoshan's hidden gem". In the top 10 beverage list in Shantou, specialized ice-blended fruit juice stores account for about one third.

Well-run stores can sell thousands of cups a day. But for a long time, it has remained in the form of "regional special drink + family-run small store", without cross-regional operation capability, and has long been in a state of having the category but no well-known brand.

The rise of Puren has made the development prospect of the ice-blended fruit juice category clearer.

First of all, the health-oriented upgrading of tea drinks has completed consumer education for ice-blended fruit juice. The intensive outbreak of fruit and vegetable tea and yogurt smoothie products in the past two years has verified the consumer demand on the side. Ice-blended fruit juice with inherent health advantages just meets this round of health upgrading demands.

Secondly, the value priority of "real fruit juice" is rising. Fruit juice is no longer just "sweet water", but is reclassified as "healthy water". The NFC juice blending scandal has instead made the openly freshly made ice-blended fruit juice more trusted by consumers.

Thirdly, the cold chain transportation industry has matured. In the past, the transportation cost of many fruits even exceeded the price of the fruits themselves, making it difficult for this business to break through geographical restrictions. Now the cost of fruit cold chain transportation has dropped significantly, and niche fruits can be purchased all over the country, providing the infrastructure for regional categories to go national.

Looking at the international market, Australian chain brand Boost Juice has opened hundreds of stores in more than 10 countries around the world; Thai specialized fruit ice store Joost and smoothie brand Oh! Juice have become popular on social platforms with genuine materials and high appearance.

Under the general trend of great health, the extreme product involution in the beverage industry is bringing a new round of development opportunities to the ice-blended fruit juice category.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Kamen" (ID: KamenClub), written by Guojun, authorized for release by 36Kr.