Mixue Brand Guidelines: A 1997 Zhengzhou Ice Stall, the Snow King & a 2025 Hong Kong Listing

A summer stall, a new name and a franchise model.

Mixue began as a street stall in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, in 1997. Its Chinese name, 蜜雪冰城 (Mìxuě Bīngchéng), appears in English as Mixue Ice Cream & Tea; a case study published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) explains that “mi” means honey and “xue” snow. The founder was Zhang Hongchao, then a college student. CKGSB Knowledge, the journal of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, reported in December 2025 that he spent a summer break selling homemade shaved ice from a makeshift stall, and English Wikipedia says he set it up with a small loan from his grandmother.

The early years were uneven. The World of Chinese reported in November 2022 that Zhang’s first shop traded as Hanliu Shaved Ice and also sold fries, and that he changed the name to Mixue Bingcheng in 1999. English Wikipedia describes the 1999 stand as a fresh attempt after several stalls had closed, and says the first lasting Mixue shop opened in 2003 after six moves. His brother Zhang Hongfu later joined the business, and the magazine names the two brothers together as the founders of the chain. A soft-serve ice cream cone, launched around 2006, became the product the chain was built on, the magazine says; English Wikipedia dates it to 2005 or 2006.

The business model followed. Mixue began franchising in 2007, when it had 36 stores, and passed 1,000 stores in 2014 and 7,225 in 2017, according to The World of Chinese; by late 2022 it counted more than 20,000, of which just 47 were run by the company itself. The same magazine reported that Mixue set up its own supply chain in 2012 to make nearly all of its ingredients, and that most of its income comes from selling ingredients, cups and equipment to franchisees rather than from fees. CKGSB Knowledge describes the company in similar terms, quoting a Shenzhen venture investor who called it “essentially a supply-chain machine.” WIPO adds that the company filed its first national trademark for the Chinese name in 2007.

A crowned snowman, a song and a short menu.

Mixue’s identity is carried by a mascot as much as by a logo. The Snow King (雪王), a cheerful snowman wearing a crown, became the company’s official mascot in 2018, WIPO says; English Wikipedia dates the launch to November 2018. Eva Hsu, founder of the Shanghai branding firm Ripplr, told The World of Chinese in 2022 that the Snow King was the brand’s sole representative and appeared “on all of their social media channels and their storefronts,” at a time when other milk tea chains hired celebrity ambassadors. In company videos the character meets small everyday problems and solves them with tea or ice cream, the magazine reported.

The second element is sound. In June 2021 Mixue released a theme song and music video, with animated Snow Kings dancing on bright, many-coloured backgrounds to a lyric set to the tune of the American folk song “Oh! Susanna,” The World of Chinese reported; the release turned the brand into a viral subject online. CKGSB Knowledge wrote in 2025 that the snowman and the song had stayed popular on social media, with customers’ own clips and memes doing much of the advertising for the company. When Mixue opened its first franchise stores in Thailand in July 2023, the Bangkok shops played a Thai version of the song, EqualOcean reported in October 2024.

The shops themselves are plain. CKGSB Knowledge describes outlets set away from prime city spots, with no seats and minimal decor, built for grab-and-go trade, and a menu cut to around 30 items, far fewer than at many rival tea chains. The core lines are bubble tea, lemon drinks and ice cream, the journal says, with local additions abroad, such as coconut drinks in Thailand and mango milk tea in the Philippines. The World of Chinese reported that a franchisee needed only about 20 square metres to open a shop, and that the short menu could be learned in about a week.

Mixue has also built a second brand on the same pattern. Lucky Cup, a budget coffee chain, was set up in 2017, according to CKGSB Knowledge, and has a mascot of its own, Grandpa K, modelled on the king in a deck of playing cards, The World of Chinese reported. In October 2025 Mixue bought a 53% stake in Fulujia, a craft beer pub chain, the journal said.

Shopfronts, cups and mascots.

China’s tea-drink, coffee, burger and restaurant chains present themselves first at street level. A shopfront, a cup and a paper bag are often the first things a customer sees of the brand, and many chains add a mascot, a theme song or a recurring character that appears on signs, packaging and social media at the same time. Some keep their shops small and built for takeaway; others put the same care into seating, lighting and a bakery counter as into the drinks.

Menus are usually organised by named drinks and dishes rather than by codes. Fruit teas, cheese-topped teas, lemon drinks, soft-serve ice cream, fried chicken and hotpot appear under house names, and chains that move abroad often add local flavours while keeping the core list the same. The names, the cups and the colours of the shop carry the brand from one city to the next.

The size of a network is something these companies publish themselves, in annual reports, listing documents and on their own sites, and the press repeats those counts with a date attached. Some chains run every shop directly; others rely mainly on franchisees, and several have moved from one model to the other. Store networks now reach Southeast Asia, Australia, Europe and North America as well as the home market.

Ownership is usually set out plainly on corporate pages: who founded the business and where, which group owns it now, and whether its shares trade in Hong Kong, on a mainland exchange or in New York. This guide follows those published facts, attributes counts to dated sources, and treats each chain’s visual identity as a design subject rather than a claim about its food or drinks.

A Hong Kong listing and a network abroad.

The parent company, Mixue Group (MIXUEBINGCHENG Co., Ltd.), listed its shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 3 March 2025, and the shares rose by more than 40% on their first day of trading, TechNode reported that day. By the time CKGSB Knowledge wrote about the company in December 2025, the chain operated more than 53,000 stores, roughly 48,000 of them in China.

Growth abroad began in 2018 with a first store in Vietnam; English Wikipedia places it in Hanoi in September of that year. From Southeast Asia the chain moved on to South Korea and Japan, and then to Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, CKGSB Knowledge reported, counting about 5,000 stores in 12 markets outside China as of 30 June 2025. The same journal gave Indonesia as the largest overseas market, with more than 2,600 outlets as of February 2025, followed by Vietnam with about 1,300 and Malaysia with more than 330. English Wikipedia says the first American store opened in Hollywood, Los Angeles, on 20 December 2025, followed four days later by two shops in New York City, at Herald Square and in Hell’s Kitchen.

The company has also widened the protection of its name. In November 2024 it filed two international trademark applications through WIPO’s Madrid System, seeking protection in 94 markets, according to WIPO’s case study.

For a design guide, Mixue shows how a mascot, a song and a short menu can hold together a network of tens of thousands of small, largely franchised shops. Compare HeyTea, a tea chain founded in Jiangmen, and Chagee, a Kunming tea chain with a Nasdaq listing. For this guide we use a cherry red, a snow white and an ice blue with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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