Decoding Mixue on the Eve of Its IPO: Education, Hardship, and an Inclusive-Access Gene

This is an English adaptation of a FoodBud historical article originally published on February 24, 2025.

Published on the eve of Mixue's Hong Kong IPO, this piece is the company's own origin story — CEO Zhang Hongfu's first-person memoir — framed as the "DNA" behind the world's largest freshly made drinks chain. (A full faithful translation of Part 1 exists separately in this repo's translation_edition/; this is the operator-focused adaptation.)

The IPO and scale context

Mixue (蜜雪冰城) launched its global offering on February 21, 2025, targeting a March 3 listing on the Hong Kong main board: up to 17.06 million H-shares at HKD 202.50, raising up to HKD 3.45 billion, implying a valuation above HKD 100 billion, with five cornerstone investors subscribing USD 200 million (M&G, HongShan/Sequoia China, Boyu, Hillhouse, and Meituan's Long-Z). As of December 31, 2024 it operated 46,479 stores in China and abroad — the world's largest freshly made drinks company — with end-retail sales of RMB 22.8/30.7/47.8/58.3 billion across 2021–2024 and cups sold of 3.6/4.7/7.4/9.0 billion. Revenue was RMB 13.6 billion (2022), RMB 20.3 billion (2023) and RMB 18.7 billion (9M 2024); net profit RMB 2.0/3.2/3.5 billion over the same periods.

Where the operating DNA comes from

The memoir traces Mixue to founder Zhang Hongchao's 1997 "Hanliu Shaved Ice" stall in a Zhengzhou urban village, and through repeated demolitions, road works and near-failures. Three threads matter for operators:

• Value as identity, not tactic. "High quality, low price" is presented as a consequence of the founder's own poverty and empathy for stretched customers — the discipline of "computing against yourself, not the customer." Price is reverse-engineered from a precise input-cost tally plus a thin margin; the answer to a low margin is efficiency and volume, not a higher price. This is also why management resists repeated pressure to "go premium."
• Patience as a precondition. By the company's telling it took ten years to open one durable store against 22 years in business; the headline store count sits on a long, unglamorous base. Education is framed as "R&D investment in thinking" — no guaranteed payoff, but none without it — generalized into a long-termist operating value of investing "without counting the return."
• Discipline after over-expansion. The narrative is candid about detours: a failed early premium push and an uncontrolled franchise-quality phase that forced the 2016 "Pangen" (root-consolidation) drive — a nationwide store audit that paused expansion to refocus on operations and product.

Why it matters

Part 1 carries no unit economics, but it establishes the thesis the later movements (hardship, inclusive-access) build on: Mixue presents its cost leadership as a cultural inheritance rather than a spreadsheet choice. For anyone benchmarking the chain, that is the caution — a value position rooted in identity is hard to out-discount and hard for the incumbent to abandon. IPO and scale figures here are pre-listing (Feb 2025) and historical.