One can become a billionaire selling ice cream, lemonade and fruit smoothies — all for less than $1. Zhang Hongchao and Zhang Hongfu, two brothers who founded China’s largest freshly made drinks chain, are making a fortune by taking advantage of China’s fast-shifting labor dynamics.
Mixue Group’s blockbuster 3.5 billion Hong Kong dollar ($444 million) public listing is a marvel for a difficult food and beverage industry where even the likes of Starbucks and McDonald’s are revamping their operations. With its share price surging, the Zhang brothers are now richer than Starbucks’ founder Howard Schultz.
Fast-growing cash cows are hard to find in this uncertain world. By number of stores, Mixue has become bigger than McDonald’s. It has over 45,000 outlets after more than doubling its locations in just three years. There’s no cash burn either. In the first nine months of 2024, revenue grew 21% to 18.7 billion Chinese yuan ($2.6 billion), while net profit came in at 3.5 billion yuan, a 42% year-on-year gain.
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