Forget McDonald’s. This Chinese fast-food chain is now the world’s biggest.
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. It sells ice cream and sugary drinks for under $1. Its mascot looks like the love child of Frosty the Snowman and the Michelin Man.
And its stores relentlessly blare a jingle set to the tune of “Oh! Susanna." This recipe helped Mixue Ice Cream and Tea become the world’s biggest food-and-beverage chain by number of locations, topping McDonald’s and Starbucks. Pronounced ME-schway, the Chinese company is found across Asia and Australia. It ended last year with 45,000 stores, according to research firm Technomic, after more than doubling its locations in three years.
The company is seeking to raise up to $510 million in an initial public offering valuing it at about $10 billion. Its stock is expected to begin trading in Hong Kong on Monday. It isn’t done expanding.
Mixue said in its IPO filing that it planned to keep growing—while acknowledging the risk that its existing stores could be cannibalized by new ones. Mixue features ice cream and drinks priced at 6 Chinese yuan, about 83 cents. That resonates in China, which is grappling with an economic slump.
Spending is down because of a broken housing market and other issues. “People are chasing more cost-efficient products," said Ernan Cui, a Beijing-based analyst for research firm Gavekal Dragonomics. She said Mixue is popular in smaller cities, where the company has focused its expansion.
Mixue was founded in 1997 by Zhang Hongchao, who opened a store selling shaved ice in Henan, a Chinese heartland province. Its blistering expansion can be explained by the simplicity of its bright red stores, often stalls wedged next to phone-repair kiosks or dumpling shops. The menu is short and very sweet.
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