Mixue Turns Dollar-Store Economics Into a Global Food Empire

A soft-serve cone priced around one dollar has helped turn Mixue Group into the world’s largest food-service chain by store count. The Chinese ice-cream and tea operator had 63,987 locations at June 30, 2026, more than McDonald’s or Starbucks, according to its interim results filed with the Hong Kong exchange.

The comparison needs a footnote. Mixue’s outlets are smaller, its average ticket is far lower, and the company is not generating anything close to McDonald’s systemwide sales. But the store count reveals the force of a different machine, one that looks less like a traditional restaurant empire than Dollar General’s relentless small-box expansion.

Mixue places standardized, compact stores in dense neighborhoods and lower-tier cities, keeps its menu narrow, and competes on price. Nearly 58% of its mainland locations were in third-tier cities and below at midyear. Franchisees provide the local capital and bear store-level operating risk, while Mixue supplies ingredients, equipment, training and operating procedures. Franchise and related fees represented only 2.7% of first-half revenue. The bigger prize is selling the network what it needs to operate.

That vertical integration is the company’s margin engine. Mixue says it self-produces all of its core ingredients and operates six production bases in China, allowing it to purchase at scale and distribute a consistent product across thousands of independent outlets. It is the same basic logic that made dollar stores formidable: small footprints, repeatable formats, low prices and saturation rather than grand flagship locations.

The model is still expanding, but its economics are beginning to show strain. Revenue rose just 2.3% year over year in the first half of 2026 to 15.2 billion yuan, while net profit fell 14.7% to 2.32 billion yuan. Gross margin slipped to 30.4% as the company spent more on ingredients, marketing, staffing and supply-chain upgrades. Mixue opened 5,455 franchised stores during the period, but closed 1,289.

That makes the overseas push important. The company had roughly 4,400 stores outside mainland China and entered Mexico, Kyrgyzstan and Brazil during the first half. It also opened its first U.S. locations, where a one-dollar cone is a sharper proposition than in China but rents, labor and regulation are much less forgiving.

For investors, Mixue’s stock, listed in Hong Kong under 2097, is a bet that supply-chain control can keep converting low prices into high unit growth. The risk is that saturation arrives before the overseas stores can match the density and purchasing power of its Chinese base.