The Bubble Tea Chain That Quietly Passed McDonald’s

By Tam Goldsmith

Mixue Bingcheng scaled globally by keeping prices low, operations simple, and franchise ownership more accessible.

Mixue Bingcheng now has more stores than McDonald’s, and it got there selling cheap ice cream, lemonade, and bubble tea.

Most people outside Asia have probably never heard of Mixue Bingcheng.

But if you walk through cities across China, Indonesia, Vietnam, or the Philippines, you will see it everywhere. Bright red signs. Small stores. Long queues. Ice cream cones selling for less than a dollar.

And somehow, while much of the restaurant industry was focused on premium coffee, premium burgers, and premium dining experiences, Mixue quietly built more than 60,000 locations worldwide, officially passing McDonald’s in store count.

That alone should get the franchise industry paying attention.

Because Mixue did not grow by convincing customers to spend more.

It grew by making sure they could afford to come back again tomorrow.

That sounds obvious, but it goes against the direction many franchise brands have taken over the last decade.

Across franchising, operators kept pushing upward. Better interiors. Bigger stores. Higher prices. More premium positioning. The logic was simple: higher ticket prices meant stronger margins.

But there was a trade off.

As brands became more expensive to build and operate, they also became harder to scale. Franchisees needed more capital. Consumers needed more disposable income. Growth became more dependent on wealthier markets.

Mixue took a different route.

The company built its model around keeping costs low from the start. It controls much of its own supply chain, manufacturing, and logistics, which helps franchisees buy ingredients cheaply and operate on tight margins. Stores are small, simple, and heavily standardised.

Nothing about the model feels luxurious.

That is exactly why it scales.

Customers are not treating Mixue like an occasional purchase. They buy it regularly because the pricing feels easy and accessible. In many markets, that matters more than branding language or expensive store design.

And right now, that lesson feels especially important.

Consumers globally are becoming more careful with money again. Inflation and rising living costs are changing spending habits. Even middle income customers are thinking harder about everyday purchases.

Mixue was already built for that environment.

A lot of Western franchise systems were not.

That does not mean premium franchising disappears. Strong premium brands will always exist. But Mixue’s growth exposes something uncomfortable: some franchise systems may have become too expensive to expand efficiently outside major wealthy markets.

When stores cost too much to build, fewer operators can afford them. When menu prices climb too high, frequency drops. When franchisees carry heavy startup costs, expansion naturally slows.

Mixue avoided many of those problems by staying operationally simple.

And honestly, that is probably good for franchising to remember.

The industry sometimes gets distracted by branding language, valuation hype, and growth presentations. But the businesses that last are usually the ones with strong economics underneath them: affordable stores, repeat customers, efficient supply chains, and franchisees who can still make money at scale.

That is what Mixue figured out.

The bigger message here is not that every franchise should suddenly become a discount brand. It is that operational discipline still matters more than image.

And for franchising, that is actually an optimistic story.

Because the brands willing to simplify operations, lower costs, and make their businesses easier for both customers and franchisees to afford may still have enormous room to grow globally.

What We Can Learn From This

Mixue’s success is a reminder that franchising does not always need to become more premium to grow. In many markets, affordability, simplicity, and repeat customer behaviour still matter more. Franchisors should look closely at startup costs, supply chain control, and operational complexity instead of assuming higher prices automatically create stronger businesses. The next major global franchise winners may simply be the brands that make the numbers work better for everyone involved.