FoodBud

Before the Castle, Part 5 — 2007: The First Franchisee, the First Store, and the First Winter ### 2007：第一代加盟商、第一家店与第一次过冬 **A FoodBud translated & annotated edition of Mixue co-founder Zhang Hongfu's first-person memoir**

*Series: "Before the Castle — How Mixue Was Really Built, 1997–2017" · Article 5 of 12 · FoodBud /insights*

1. FoodBud Editor's Note

Article 4 ended with Mixue's four-square-meter Dongfeng Road window stall overwhelmed by one-yuan cone demand. Article 5 moves from Zhang Hongchao's second store into Zhang Hongfu's own entry into the business: dropping out of college, selling candy and audio products, running a lamb-skewer stall, buying secondhand ice-cream machines with his wife's savings, and becoming one of Mixue's earliest franchisees.

This installment also shows why early franchise growth was not automatically a success story. The model was powerful in spring and summer, but it had no winter product system. Zhang Hongfu's first store was profitable enough to make people jealous, yet a basic hygiene/process failure nearly killed it. His first attempt at milk tea failed because he misunderstood the category, the price point, and the customer. The lesson is blunt: a low-price chain cannot survive on a hot product alone. It needs operating discipline, product rhythm, and headquarters support.

2. Why This Installment Matters

The later Mixue system looks inevitable only in hindsight. In 2007, it was still four square meters, secondhand machines, a makeshift powder workshop, a cone machine run in brutal heat, and franchisees learning through mistakes that damaged real customers. This article is the bridge from "a store with lines" to "a company that must serve franchisees." It also marks Zhang Hongfu's transition from observer to operator: from a younger brother helping on weekends to a first-generation franchisee whose own store became both a business and a training ground.

—— FoodBud English Translation of the Source · Part 5 Begins ——

My First Store (Part I)

The two ice-cream machines were still not enough. Buying a new machine was too expensive, so Zhang Hongchao began searching online. Every used machine he found online was in another city.

Alipay already existed at the time, but they did not know how to use it. They contacted the seller directly, asked him to take photos and send them by email so they could confirm the machine's condition, then arranged to wire the full payment and have the seller ship the machines by freight.

Inside, they were anxious. What if the money went out and disappeared like a stone sinking into the sea? Fortunately, their luck was good. A week after the payment was sent, the machine arrived. Once it arrived, they cleaned and maintained it every possible way. Although they had only bought three machines by then, the group had already trained itself into professional after-sales technicians. Their ability to clean and maintain machines was first-rate. After a thorough cleaning, the machine looked almost new.

The newly received machine was added to the store. Three machines fought together, yet supply still fell short of demand. The store continued to have lines from morning to night. When they counted the cash at night, they could sell more than 3,000 yuan in a day.

The Super Ice Castle at the first store was not idle either. Zhang Hongchao added a dough mixer inside and used it as a dry-powder mixer. Sugar, milk powder, and other auxiliary ingredients went in; one batch could produce 150 *jin* of ice-cream powder. The cone machine was also no longer enough, so they had already ordered another new one from the manufacturer and put it in Super Ice Castle's back kitchen for production. Gradually, that corner became a small central factory.

Do not ask why they did not look for an outside supply chain. How could an outside supply chain meet their need for high quality at low price? Besides, at that time they had not even heard the concept "supply chain." What was sold outside was generic product. The ice-cream powder was awful, yet not cheap. It passed through layers of agents and distributors. Ice-cream powder was also still a relatively new food ingredient, with low volume and therefore higher price.

Because the product was competitive and the price was affordable, the second store's customer line kept growing. Later they found a fourth machine online and added it to the store. Business stayed hot. By the nightly cash count, it could sell 4,000 to 5,000 yuan. That meant they were producing 4,000 to 5,000 ice creams a day. Zhang Hongfu believes it was surely a sales champion. But this store could not add another machine. In a four-square-meter shop, there was simply nowhere to put new equipment.

So Zhang Hongchao began thinking about opening new stores. And while he was thinking about opening new stores, relatives and friends around him saw the scene and also said they wanted to open branches. They began discussing whether they could join as franchisees.

Zhang Hongfu was one of the people who wanted to open a franchise store.

Here he inserts his own situation at the time.

He took the national college entrance exam in 2003, the year of SARS. That September he went to Huanghe Science and Technology University to study law. In fact, he especially liked biology and similar science subjects, but his math was too poor. The full score on the math exam was 150; he got 42. If he chose biology or another science-related major, he would certainly not survive advanced mathematics. With such an uneven academic profile, he could only choose a not-so-good university. Since his major also had to avoid advanced math, he chose a pure humanities subject. His family, teachers, and classmates all encouraged him to choose law. They thought he could talk.

After enrolling in a confused way, he discovered that the university was not the university he had imagined. A lawyer was not the Hong Kong television lawyer he imagined, locked in sharp courtroom argument and fighting by reason. He also could not learn the subjects tested in the law major. When the teacher lectured at the front, he sat below as if inside clouds and fog, with no interest at all. By the end of the first semester, he failed all four courses.

That winter vacation, he worked as a temporary Spring Festival worker for Hsu Fu Chi candy inside a Dennis supermarket. By chance, at the supermarket bookstall, he saw Han Han's new book, *Tonggao 2003*. It talked about problems in schools, problems in learning, and problems with so-called experts and professors. After reading it, he felt exhilarated and deeply understood. Han Han's legendary experience — dropping out in the second year of high school, publishing books, racing cars — filled him with envy.

What left the deepest impression was Han Han's line that universities were like prostitutes: as long as you had money, they stood in a row, and you could choose whichever one you wanted. Han Han also talked about learning: learning might not happen in school, and once you left school, everything was learning.

Fine. His idol Han Han had dropped out. He had heard that the world's richest man, Bill Gates, had also dropped out. Zhang Hongfu wanted to drop out too.

After winter vacation, the first thing he did when he returned to school was wonder whether he should quit. Coincidentally, at the end of the first semester he had fallen for a girl in the economics department. Although he showed her all kinds of attention, she was not interested in him. Later he told her, "If you don't get together with me, I'll drop out." He already felt university had little meaning. She indeed did not get together with him. Now the boast he had made left him with no way to climb down. So that, too, became a catalyst for dropping out.

Then drop out.

At that time he was truly young and reckless. He thought that if he dropped out and worked hard, maybe he could become the second Bill Gates.

He did not yet know that Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Ellison were also dropouts.

He dropped out in March 2004. His sister-in-law, who worked at Hsu Fu Chi, found him a job. His brother gave him a secondhand bicycle. He rented a room in an urban village called Miao Li, in the far northwest corner of Zhengzhou, and officially began his social life.

My First Store (Part II)

The name of his lamb-skewer stall was "Wo Kao!" — literally, "I roast," and also a homophone for an everyday exclamation.

After leaving the Hsu Fu Chi job, he had also grilled lamb skewers. Lamb skewers were quite profitable, so that experience taught him that business could make money quickly. In October 2004, the weather cooled and people basically stopped eating late-night market food. Nobody ate lamb skewers either, so he closed the stall and went to look for work again.

He happened to be interested in electronics. A distributor for Japanese audio products was hiring sales consultants, so in November 2004 he applied to sell audio equipment. He sold Japanese brands such as Pioneer, Onkyo, and Panasonic.

After that, he drifted along and followed his manager to another audio distributor, selling audiovisual products from brands such as JVC, Philips, and Samsung.

There is a photo in the source marked as Zhang Hongfu's only work photo.

He did that work for two years. He felt he gained quite a lot. International companies were still far ahead of domestic brands at the time in brand building, product design concepts, and marketing response. Those experiences became very useful in later entrepreneurship. Most importantly, he also gained his current wife.

By the beginning of 2007, he was already the highest-income person in his company. He could vaguely feel he had reached the ceiling. It was time to go out and do some business. That spring, Zhang Hongchao's current second store was doing booming business. Relatives and friends also wanted to franchise. His wife persuaded him: hadn't he always wanted to do business? He could open one of his brother's ice-cream franchise stores.

At that time, he still looked down on this small business. He always wanted to open a restaurant of a thousand square meters or so, like his brother. His wife said he did not have the experience or enough capital; he should just open a small store. If the small store did well, he could later build a chain and open many branches.

Seeing that he was still hesitating, she told him that he had long wanted to do business. If he did not resign now, the May Day peak season would arrive and he would again not want to resign.

At the critical moment, he listened to her.

In April he resigned decisively. While searching for a storefront, he also searched online for used ice-cream machines. Later he found someone in Suzhou who had posted two machines for sale together, so he prepared to go to Suzhou to collect them.

Although his income was high at the time, he also spent money heavily. He had not a single cent of principal. His wife gave him a bank card containing 20,000 yuan she had saved by living frugally. With that card in his pocket, he boarded a train to Suzhou.

It was his first trip south of the Yangtze River. There was no time to appreciate the pavilions, terraces, and towers of Suzhou gardens. He went straight to the warehouse of the man transferring the machines. The two machines were still in very good condition. They agreed on a price of 10,000 yuan for two machines, packed them, found a freight company to ship them to Zhengzhou, and then he rode back.

When he returned to Zhengzhou, he still had not found a store. Then one day his sister called and said she had seen a storefront for him and thought it looked decent. He hurried over. It was directly opposite what is now Henan University of Economics and Law, in front of a shop selling Taiwan Liuhe steamed buns. There was a display window at the entrance.

Why choose a window? Because his brother's store was also a window. Everything was imitation.

The area was 1.5 square meters. He was on the left side of the door; the auntie selling buns was on the right. The rent was 800 yuan a month. Inside, she also gave him one square meter of space for inventory. They happily settled the arrangement.

Although his math was poor, his hands-on ability was strong, and physics was also good. He cleaned the space, pasted wallpaper, ran electrical wiring, unpacked and washed the machines when they arrived, connected the circuits, tested them, and once everything was ready, opened for business.

The source notes that the old storefront had later become a Shaxian Snacks location. So Zhang Hongfu was one of Mixue Bingcheng's first-generation franchisees. His signboard number was Fresh 09. Strictly speaking, he says, he should have been the fourth one; he chose 9 because he liked the number 9. In the same batch of franchisees were Xiong Fei, now in the company's logistics center, who opened the Muzhuan store; Luo Jing, now in the finance center, who opened a store in a bread shop on Yihe Road; and vice general manager Shi Peng, who opened the Zhongyuan Trade City store opposite Bishagang Park.

By coincidence, two days before the memoir section was written, he passed the old store location while treating someone to a meal. He saw the pale green wallpaper wrapped around the water pipe coming down from the ceiling. It was the same wallpaper he had wrapped there back then. It had faded in the sun, but he could still recognize it. Twelve years had passed in a flash. The Taiwan Liuhe bun shop had become Shaxian Snacks, and the plastic-steel window at the entrance had been removed.

My First Store (Part III)

Good hot pot speaks for itself. Good ice cream also speaks for itself.

His small store was extremely simple. On the left side of the room's window, the landlord sold buns. On the right side, Zhang Hongfu had one machine, one box of cones, and one round stool. Behind him was a shelf for ingredients, a mixer, a stainless-steel basin, and a scale. That was the store's entire household inventory.

The full store cost was 5,000 yuan for the ice-cream machine; rent was 800 yuan, paid monthly; electrical wire, wallpaper, printed posters, and the scale together cost less than 500 yuan; the shelf in the back cost 100 yuan. The first batch of ice-cream powder was supplied first and paid later. The total cost of the store was 6,400 yuan.

On the first day, because there were no posters or other promotional materials yet, he sold 183 yuan. On the second day, after the promotional materials were pasted up, he immediately sold more than 600 yuan. After that, the store stabilized at around 800 yuan a day. The business was so good it made people jealous. Even the auntie selling buns said his business was strangely simple: he did not have to mix filling, knead dough, or get up in the middle of the night to start proofing dough for buns.

The source includes a floor plan of the store. The store faced west on Wenhua Road. Every noon and evening was peak time. Students from the finance college and customers from the technology market to the south lined up under the vicious sun to buy. The westering sun was so bright people could not open their eyes. The bun steamer on the left also made people sweat heavily. But perhaps because the business made money, Zhang Hongfu never felt tired. After selling there for a while, his hands and feet became quick, his technique skilled, and his customer reception warm. Even now, he says, his ice-cream-making skill has not declined. At his peak, he could make eight ice creams at the same time with one hand.

Where there is good business, nearby merchants soon become jealous. At first, a cake shop next door called Fujingyuan saw his ice cream selling hotly and also added an ice-cream machine, selling at 1.5 yuan each. The proprietress specifically told him that they used good ingredients, so their cost was high, unlike his cheap ingredients. Zhang Hongfu notes that she said this to his face, and that this proprietress really did not know how to chat. Their location was better than his. Students leaving school and technology-market employees getting off work passed their shop before reaching his, so he felt quite nervous.

When they opened, he went over to buy one and taste it. In an instant, he regained confidence. In his mind he calculated that their ice cream should not last a month. The final fact was that aside from people buying during opening week, almost nobody visited afterward. After selling for a little more than twenty days, they pasted "for transfer" on the machine.

Good hot pot speaks for itself. Good ice cream also speaks for itself.

While operating the store, he discovered many things he could not have imagined before operating. For example, as the weather became hotter, the ice-cream machine had to be cleaned every day. Otherwise the ingredients inside would sour and develop a bad taste, fermenting and separating like yogurt.

The next competitor suffered precisely because of fermentation. Not long after Fujingyuan stopped selling ice cream, another person placed an ice-cream machine two or three storefronts south of them. This time the person did not tell Zhang Hongfu what ingredients he used, but the price was only one yuan. It was said the owner had joined a brand from Hebei. As soon as he opened, Zhang Hongfu hurried to taste it. Bad news: it did not taste worse than his.

So after that competitor opened, Zhang Hongfu watched his store closely. The competitor's location was also better, business was not bad, and there were basically always people buying. It formed a direct competition with Zhang Hongfu's side.

All he could do was be more diligent every day: distribute flyers, promote, clean. Thanks to the sweeping and cleaning habits he had developed while selling audio at Dennis, he wiped the steps outside until they were spotless and went to Huanghe Food City to buy a red carpet to lay at the door. When customers came, he did not dare neglect a single one. He had to greet them with a smile. The best service he had seen in Zhengzhou at the time was KFC. KFC cashiers then would call out the amount received and change returned, remove their hats, and bow. He imitated them too, stretching out his voice to call out receipt and payment, welcoming people in and sending them off. Only this way did his business avoid being competed down.

But after two weeks, he felt the other side's business was declining. By then he had already hired an employee named Shaohua, so he asked Shaohua to buy one of their ice creams and bring it back. He tasted it and thought: his opportunity had come. This brand had made a mistake.

The weather was hot. The competitor must not have cleaned the ice-cream machine frequently enough, causing the ice-cream slurry in the tank to ferment. One bite filled the mouth with a sour, spoiled, rancid taste. None of the original milk aroma remained. Zhang Hongfu could hardly hide his glee.

The next day and the third day, they continued buying and tasting. The competitor's product was almost still spoiled. Later Zhang Hongfu analyzed that the owner probably did not know he needed to clean the machine at all. At that time Zhang Hongfu's mind was small; he did not go remind him. He only secretly delighted in the competitor's mistake.

Very soon, that competitor's traffic began to fall sharply. Later there were no customers. Finally it closed.

Perhaps even by the time he closed, he never understood why his business had become worse and worse. Zhang Hongfu also never told him the reason he had analyzed.

Looking back now, Zhang Hongfu says the only thing one can do is work hard to make oneself better and avoid mistakes. If others make mistakes and you are careful, perhaps you win.

Forming the Company — and Falling Into a Pit Others Had Already Fallen Into

In July 2007, as there were more and more franchise stores, they felt it was necessary to form a company.

They registered Zhengzhou Mixue Bingcheng Trading Co., Ltd. to carry out the chain business. The office was a small room opened up inside Mixue Bingcheng Home-Style Restaurant. When customers called to inquire about franchising, Tao Ge handled the franchise discussions. He also delivered goods. As shipment volumes grew, the original Super Ice Castle back kitchen was no longer enough. They felt they needed another small factory.

Zhang Hongchao found a village far north along Wenhua Road, almost to North University Town. The village was called Gao Village. There he rented a residential house for raw-material processing.

This factory produced only two products: ice-cream cones and ice-cream powder. The person producing the cones was Zhang Hongfu's mother. She was especially hard-working. The cone machine baked at high temperature, and the workshop temperature could reach more than 50 degrees Celsius. When operating the machine, his mother was sweating like rain. But when she thought that she was helping her son build a business, she was full of energy.

For the cone batter, Zhang Hongchao bought an old washing machine and mixed the batter inside the washing machine. Grassroots entrepreneurship meant making full use of everything.

The first employee producing ice-cream powder was a girl named Yanzi, who had followed Zhang Hongchao in entrepreneurship for a long time. They still used a dough mixer to stir milk powder and sugar powder. Finally they manually divided it with small shovels into three-kilogram small bags and sealed them with a simple sealing machine.

At that time, production-condition requirements were not strict. The factory building and equipment were simple. The production environment was quite difficult. Licenses and permits were also incomplete.

Fortunately, the ingredients they used were relatively good. They delivered these matched ingredients to stores in this exposed way, and customers still flocked to them. Zhang Hongfu says one cannot call them black-hearted operators. Twelve years earlier, many foodservice start-ups operated in workshop style like this.

Viewed with today's eyes, how could products made under such conditions be eaten? But at the time they not only sold them; they ate them themselves, and the children in their own family ate them too. Lack of fastidiousness was also a marker of that era.

As Shaohua, the first employee in Zhang Hongfu's store, gradually became skilled, he began planning to open his own branch, because he still had one unused ice-cream machine.

At that time, in Yingbin Market in North University Town, there was a stairwell on the right side of the entrance. This stairwell had originally been considered by another friend of Zhang Hongchao for opening a store, but at the last moment that friend hesitated and transferred the store to Zhang Hongfu. He did not expect this store to become his later life-saving straw. He says he will discuss that later.

After the new store opened, he watched this new store directly, while Shaohua watched the original Fresh 09 store for him. Seeing that he now had two stores and business was gradually improving, it seemed he too might slowly step onto the handsome-rich-successful road.

But he did not step onto that road. Instead, he jumped into a pit someone else had already jumped through.

After the new store opened, he worried that Shaohua, a girl, would be too busy at the old store. So he bought her a large stainless-steel bucket, the kind that could hold 40 liters of water. The reason was that at first they used small basins to mix ice-cream slurry. During peak periods, they could not prepare it fast enough because the container was too small and could only mix four liters at a time. He thought a big bucket could mix one whole bucket at once, replacing ten small basins and saving the employee's strength.

Not long afterward, the old store's business became worse and worse. Once it rained for three days in a row, and he went to the old store to check the situation. He discovered that the ingredients Shaohua had mixed in the bucket were from three days earlier and still had not sold out. He stirred them with a mixing rod and found the entire bucket of ingredients had spoiled, fermenting into something like soft tofu pudding. He quickly opened the lid of the ice-cream machine and found the ingredients inside the tank had also long since spoiled. He tasted them: aside from a sour and strange rancid flavor, there was no aroma at all.

The same raw-material spoilage detour that his competitor had taken — his own store had already taken it too, and more than once. This was the reason business had become worse and worse during that period.

Once the cause was found, he quickly corrected course. But it was already late. Customers who had been harmed are difficult to compensate for the harm they suffered. So the old store's business did not improve again all the way through autumn.

Operation is like this. There can be no shortcuts and no laziness. One must put in full effort and stay alert at all times. With even a small negligence, the result can almost be irreversible.

First Taste of Winter's Loneliness

In September, students returned to school and the weather became colder day by day. Zhang Hongfu had Shaohua keep guarding the bun-shop Fresh 09 store, still struggling to sell ice cream.

Because that store was only a little over one square meter, there was really no room to do anything. He put his energy into the Yingbin Market store. The main topic was: how to survive winter?

Although the Yingbin Market store was only a small stairwell, it had depth inside. From the time that store opened, he tried all kinds of things there. He had a franchise headquarters, but at the time the company could barely take care of anything except delivery.

To make business better, he had to think of all kinds of methods himself: make posters, make display stands, make a bar counter, pull in a freezer, and learn from the main store to sell ice porridge. It was troublesome, but he was young then, with energy and time to toss things around.

Winter was approaching; each autumn rain brought another layer of cold. Headquarters still supplied ice-cream powder and cones as usual and could supply nothing else. Zhang Hongfu decided to add milk tea.

Before adding milk tea, he had almost never drunk tea or milk tea. The reason he added it was that a new milk-tea store called Seven Cups Tea had opened next to him. Seven Cups Tea opened in autumn. At first he did not take it seriously. Who knew that after it opened, business would be unusually strong? Every day that small room was packed so tightly water could not pass through.

How hot was it? By October, his own daily revenue had fallen below 100 yuan, while the other side was packed with business. It was said they could sell more than 2,000 yuan in one day. He could not sit still.

Do not forget that headquarters still had the home-style restaurant. In winter, Zhang Hongchao was busy adding hot pot inside the restaurant. At the Dongfeng Road second store, they tried popcorn and candied hawthorns. Because the milk-tea store next to Zhang Hongfu was too strong, he felt he should add milk tea too. Maybe meeting strength would make him stronger.

So he went to the raw-material wholesale market: Wankelai on Zhengzhou's South Third Ring Road. Once he arrived, there were all kinds of dazzling ingredients, everything one could want. As long as he bought ingredients, they would teach him the technique. He quickly bought several boxes of goods, returned to the store, and began preparing to launch. Full of confidence, he printed 20,000 milk-tea flyers. He priced his milk tea fifty fen higher than Seven Cups Tea. Buy a cup of milk tea and receive one ice cream. He believed that being fifty fen more expensive made him look higher-end than Seven Cups Tea, while giving away an ice cream made him look more affordable.

Reality slapped him hard in the face.

On the first day, he handed out 5,000 flyers and sold 19 cups of milk tea, while giving away 19 ice creams. On the second day he handed out another 5,000 flyers. It was an improvement: he sold 21 cups. On the third day he sold 10 cups. On the fourth day he sold 12.

That winter, milk tea would not sell. The weather was cold. Nobody wanted ice cream. He does not know how he got through it. In any case, his milk tea never took off. All his confident analysis collapsed before customers' choices. His stairwell store was open to the air. Every day, watching Seven Cups Tea diagonally opposite packed with customers, he stood there lonely, drinking the northwest wind.

Later he could only accept reality helplessly: he did not understand tea. His milk tea really did not taste good, and it was fifty fen more expensive than the competitor's. At 2.5 yuan, it was 2.5 times more expensive than his ice cream. His store name was still Mixue Bingcheng Fresh Ice Cream. If he were the customer, he too would buy Seven Cups Tea.

The other franchise stores were not much better. That winter, almost all franchise stores closed, because company headquarters had not produced a winter product. Looking back now, why was there no winter product? First, the main store had its own hot pot, so the boss's fate and the franchisees' fate were not tied together. Second, the boss's own second store was also a mud bodhisattva crossing the river — barely able to save itself.

When it snowed that winter, the combined revenue of his two stores was around 30 yuan.

He relied on a line of poetry to hold on:

*"If winter comes, can spring be far behind?"*

—— FoodBud English Translation of the Source · Part 5 Ends ——

3. FoodBud Notes

1. The first franchisees are also the first stress test of headquarters. Demand for one-yuan cones made franchising feel obvious, but the early headquarters could barely deliver supplies. It did not yet provide product calendars, training, hygiene SOPs, or winter survival plans.

2. Low price requires process discipline. Zhang Hongfu's spoiled-slurry episode is the sharpest operational lesson in this installment. The product can be high quality, and the price can be right, but if the machine is not cleaned and the slurry sits for days, customer trust is destroyed.

3. "High quality at low price" begins before the formal supply chain. The small central factory uses a dough mixer, a washing machine, family labor, and hand packing. Crude as it was, the strategic aim is already clear: outside generic ingredients cannot satisfy Mixue's quality-cost requirement.

4. The franchise model exposes a seasonal mismatch. Spring and summer lines make the model look easy. Winter shows the gap: a single cold-product concept cannot support stores year-round, and franchisees suffer when headquarters has not built the product system.

5. Zhang Hongfu enters as operator, not as theorist. The dropout story is not decoration. It explains his hands-on bias: selling audio teaches brand and service; lamb skewers teach cash turnover; the one-square-meter store teaches throughput; winter teaches humility before the customer.

4. Timeline (this installment)

  • 2003 — Zhang Hongfu takes the SARS-year college entrance exam and enters Huanghe Science and Technology University to study law.
  • March 2004 — He drops out, begins working, and moves into a rented room in Zhengzhou.
  • 2004 — He sells Hsu Fu Chi candy, runs the "Wo Kao!" lamb-skewer stall, then enters audio-product sales.
  • Early 2007 — Zhang Hongchao's one-yuan ice-cream store keeps adding secondhand machines; the back kitchen becomes a small central factory.
  • April 2007 — Zhang Hongfu resigns from audio sales and buys used ice-cream machines in Suzhou using his wife's savings.
  • 2007 — Zhang Hongfu opens Fresh 09, becoming one of Mixue's first-generation franchisees.
  • July 2007 — Zhengzhou Mixue Bingcheng Trading Co., Ltd. is registered.
  • Late 2007 — Gao Village becomes a crude production site for cones and ice-cream powder.
  • Winter 2007 — Most franchise stores close or struggle; Zhang Hongfu's milk-tea attempt fails, and his two stores together sometimes sell only about 30 yuan on snowy days.

5. Pull Quotes (web-ready)

1. *"How could an outside supply chain meet our need for high quality at low price?"* — Zhang Hongfu (translated from the source text) 2. *"Everything was imitation."* — Zhang Hongfu, on choosing his first store window (translated from the source text) 3. *"Good hot pot speaks for itself. Good ice cream also speaks for itself."* — Zhang Hongfu (translated from the source text) 4. *"There can be no shortcuts and no laziness."* — Zhang Hongfu (translated from the source text) 5. *"When it snowed that winter, the combined revenue of my two stores was around 30 yuan."* — Zhang Hongfu (translated from the source text)

Series navigation

*Before the Castle: How Mixue Was Really Built, 1997-2017 · Part 5 of 12 · FoodBud /insights*

*This is a translated and annotated edition, not an original FoodBud interview. Authorized translation: translated with permission from Zhang Hongfu's memoir (经授权翻译自张红甫回忆录). Original author/source: Zhang Hongfu (张红甫). The translated source is kept separate from FoodBud's Editor's Note, FoodBud Notes, timeline, and pull quotes.*

*Publication note: corporate data is primary-source-locked to HKEX filings where stated. Market capitalization and any FY2025 GMV / systemwide-sales figure are intentionally not stated. “Scale” means systemwide sales / GMV and store count, never company revenue. FoodBud is information only, not investment advice.*