Market capitalization shrinks by nearly 100 billion, Mixue Bingcheng starts "going astray"

Snow King’s New Subordinate

Author | Du Xinyi

March of a year ago was the highlight when Mixue Bingcheng crowned the new tea beverage king.

In the following hundred days, Mixue Bingcheng’s stock price soared to a high of HKD 618.5, with a market value surpassing HKD 230 billion.

A year later in March, Snow King is still Snow King, but its strength has shrunk by nearly HKD 100 billion.

If you compress Mixue’s K-line into a weekly chart, it shows a complete inverted V shape. This may be the most authentic valuation of Snow King after removing the bubbles, or perhaps Snow King still longs for its “glory days” and is unwilling to be so “mediocre.”

Relying on its deeply ingrained extreme cost performance and years of rapid expansion, Mixue Bingcheng now has over 50,000 stores, firmly holding the top spot in global new tea beverage store scale, becoming a true “national tea brand.”

However, as the reach of its store network approaches the limit and the benefits of rapid expansion gradually fade, the once focused Mixue Bingcheng—known for a lemon water or an ice cream—suddenly begins to “diversify.”

It starts selling freshly ground coffee, opening beer shops, and even investing heavily in theme parks… operations seemingly unrelated to new tea beverages keep surfacing.

From the nationwide popularity of “Sweet Honey” to now experimenting across various fields, where will Mixue Bingcheng go next?

Snow King’s Growth Woes

In a marathon, victory often depends not on speed but on endurance.

Mixue Bingcheng’s expansion speed has long been a leader in the industry, but this long-distance race still has a long way to go.

Financial reports show that by the first half of 2025, Mixue Bingcheng had a total of 53,000 stores worldwide. In comparison, the industry leader Luckin Coffee had only 31,000 stores globally by the end of 2025.

After covering all consumer-demanded corners, the melody of Mixue Bingcheng’s theme song has become a national-level consumer memory. But looking at the present, it’s clear that Mixue’s growth pace is slowing. This indicates that the high-speed expansion benefits are coming to an end.

According to Mixue Bingcheng’s disclosures, in 2021, the average daily retail sales per store was HKD 4,144.6; in 2022, HKD 3,936.1—a 5% decline year-over-year; in 2023, it rose to HKD 4,127.8 but still below the level two years earlier. Additionally, in the first nine months of 2023, the average daily retail sales per store was HKD 4,416.3, and in the same period of 2024, HKD 4,184.4—a 5.3% decrease year-over-year.

Source: Corporate Announcement

Simultaneously, the number of cups sold per store and daily order volume have declined, indicating that after years of expansion, store efficiency has peaked, and high store density is leading to internal competition and customer flow dilution.

It’s important to note that for a franchise-centric model like Mixue Bingcheng, store scale is fundamental to its growth logic. A decline in per-store profitability directly compresses franchisees’ profit margins. When regional store density reaches a certain level, customer flow is continuously diverted, and competition among franchisees intensifies. Blindly opening new stores at this stage not only fails to boost overall revenue but also increases supply chain and operational costs, ultimately becoming a “stumbling block” to profits.

The capital market’s reaction has long reflected this growth anxiety.

When it listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in March 2025, Mixue Bingcheng was considered a star in the consumer sector, with its stock soaring over 40% on the first day. It then surged for a period, once being called one of the “Hong Kong Stock Three Sisters” alongside Pop Mart and Lao Pao Gold.

At that time, the market held high expectations, watching how far this expansion myth could go.

But after the peak, the turning point arrived as expected. The once soaring stock price began to fluctuate downward after reaching a peak. By March 2026, the stock price had nearly halved from its high, and its market value evaporated by over HKD 100 billion. As of the latest report, Mixue Bingcheng’s stock price is HKD 352 per share, up 0.11%, with a total market value of HKD 133.6 billion.

Behind the price decline is market consensus: relying solely on opening new stores can no longer sustain further growth. The growth ceiling of Mixue Bingcheng is now in sight.

On one side, store efficiency has peaked; on the other, stock prices are falling, and market expectations are reaching their limit. At this stage, Mixue Bingcheng can no longer rely on “old methods” to move forward. To break through the growth bottleneck and rekindle market enthusiasm, it must step out of its comfort zone and try something new.

Mixue’s “Diversification”

The pragmatic nature ingrained in Mixue Bingcheng is reflected in founder Zhang Hongchao’s entrepreneurial experience.

In its early days, when opening its first small shop in Zhengzhou, Mixue Bingcheng had no clear product positioning. It sold drinks and snacks indiscriminately, with the only survival rule being “grounded.” While some competitors sold ice cream for 20 yuan, Zhang Hongchao insisted on selling it for just 1 yuan, using real cost performance to meet ordinary consumers’ needs and carving out a path in fierce market competition.

This survival wisdom, forged from grassroots struggle, ultimately became the brand’s unique foundation—avoiding trends and high-end markets, focusing instead on genuine mass consumer needs. It was this pragmatism that supported the rapid expansion to over 50,000 stores and became a solid card for Mixue Bingcheng.

Today, pragmatism remains the core of Mixue Bingcheng’s identity. While peers in the new tea beverage sector compete over high-end milk sources and rare teas, pushing prices to 20-30 yuan per cup, Mixue Bingcheng sticks to its “affordable tea” fundamentals, with a few yuan lemon water and ice cream still driving store traffic.

But as growth reaches its limit, this proud pragmatism faces new challenges. When the market for affordable tea drinks is saturated, what else can be done to find new growth points?

Thus, the grassroots shop that once “did everything” for survival has, after growing into a tea giant, once again adopted a “do everything” approach.

This time, with bigger scale and broader boundaries, no longer limited to tea drinks.

As a brand born from new tea beverages, Mixue Bingcheng’s cross-border exploration begins with the familiar scenario of alcohol beverages. On September 30, 2025, Mixue Bingcheng signed an investment agreement with Fulujia and its shareholders, acquiring 53% equity for about 297 million yuan. After the deal, Fulujia officially became a non-wholly owned subsidiary of Mixue.

Five months later, Mixue Bingcheng also set up a new alcohol company, launching fresh beer operations in Chengdu. Tianyancha shows that Sichuan Fresh Beer Fulujia Brewing Co., Ltd. was officially established, with Zhou Yibo as legal representative, registered capital of 50 million yuan, fully owned by Mixue’s Fulujia (Zhengzhou) Enterprise Management Co., Ltd., marking the formal landing of its beer business.

Beyond alcohol, Mixue is also extending into other categories. By the end of 2025, Mixue Bingcheng quietly launched a breakfast plan, initially testing in Dalian, Xi’an, Hangzhou, and other cities, offering breakfast milk paired with bread. Prior to this, some netizens had received surveys from the brand about breakfast products, indicating early preparations.

The coffee sector has also been incorporated. In March 2026, market rumors suggested Mixue Bingcheng planned to pilot freshly ground coffee, including introducing fully automatic coffee machines, launching new coffee products, and upgrading coffee beans and milk—always maintaining Mixue’s consistent high-quality, affordable strategy.

Surprisingly, Mixue has also stepped outside the food and beverage boundary into cultural tourism. Recently, at a city-wide mobilization meeting in Zhengzhou to promote a good start for the new year, the Snow King City Theme Park was listed as a key support project, planned to be located in the Mixue Bingcheng flagship headquarters area. The company is investing in creating an immersive cultural tourism experience, bringing the beloved Snow King IP from storefront signage into offline venues, attempting to leverage new consumption scenarios to enhance brand influence and open new growth dimensions.

From alcohol, fresh beer, breakfast, coffee to cultural tourism parks, Mixue is aggressively exploring its second growth curve.

But this time, it faces not just the survival competition of small street shops but the challenge of transformation and growth.

Understanding Ordinary People Is Mixue’s Biggest Confidence in Trial and Error

The roots of Mixue Bingcheng are always embedded among ordinary people.

Its customer base includes students clutching change on their way home from school, workers grabbing a lemon water on their commute, small shop owners on the street, residents in communities—ordinary people pursuing practicality and high cost performance.

This large and stable audience sustains the scale of over 50,000 stores worldwide, supporting its presence in shopping malls in first-tier cities, streets in county towns, and overseas neighborhoods. Its red signboards always appear precisely where people need them.

It is this vast audience, extensive store network, and deeply ingrained brand influence that give Mixue Bingcheng the confidence to boldly experiment with coffee, alcohol, breakfast, and even cross-border cultural tourism, exploring seemingly unfamiliar fields.

The logic behind this is similar to Pinduoduo: first, safeguard the core consumer group, build a solid foundation, then gradually explore more possibilities outward from this base.

Mixue’s strength lies in activating the stock market, continuously launching new products and creating new consumption scenarios for its existing loyal customers through its widespread stores, constantly generating new consumer value.

With a large, loyal audience, a dense store network, and a strong brand foundation, Mixue Bingcheng still has abundant opportunities ahead.