"When every penny of cost saving comes from AI algorithm optimization, the industrialization revolution of China's tea-drink industry is quietly completing inside a 6-yuan cup of lemonade."
As of June 30, 2025, Mixue's global store count exceeded 53,000, of which 48,300 are in China, with 57.6% in third-tier and lower cities, making it the ready-to-drink beverage enterprise with the largest store network in the world. The core engine behind this scaling miracle is its self-developed "Snow King Brain" AI system, an intelligent system that already covers the full chain from procurement to store.
Data is the underlying capability of supply-chain optimization. By introducing AI, Mixue not only raises store-operation efficiency but also seeks new breakthroughs in customer experience!
01 The Survival Contradiction of Affordable Tea Drinks: The Game Between Scaled Expansion and Cost-Out-of-Control Risk.
The tea-drink industry always has a core contradiction—the game between scaled expansion under a low-price positioning and the risk of cost losing control. When a single cup is priced at 6 yuan, the enterprise must achieve extreme cost control at every link—raw-material procurement, logistics, store operations—and the three major "cost black holes" under the traditional model become the expansion bottleneck:
1. The Uncertainty of Agricultural-Product Price Volatility
Raw materials like lemons and tea are significantly affected by weather and season; small and mid brands' material loss rate generally exceeds 30%, while Mixue, via its AI system, keeps this indicator below 8%. When Anyue suffered a frost disaster in 2024, its Yunnan strategic reserve depot responded quickly, covering a 15% material gap and demonstrating the risk-resistance of the intelligent system.
2. Efficiency Loss Caused by Labor Dependence
Traditional stores rely on staff memorizing recipes; per-cup error can reach 5–8 ml, and training takes a full week; store managers spend 4.2 hours a day on scheduling and inventory, leaving no time to optimize service. This "rule-by-people" model, at a ten-thousand-store scale, easily triggers standard drift and cost runaway.
3. The Diseconomies of Scale in the Logistics Network
When stores reach 11 countries, the traditional delivery model struggles to balance "timely replenishment" and "transport cost." Mixue once faced material shortages from regional-warehouse scheduling imbalance in its early days, which directly drove its logistics AI transformation, ultimately achieving 12-hour cold-chain coverage for 97% of stores, with transport loss rate only half the industry average.
The Snow King Aizhihui Technology Co., founded in November 2024, secures from the organizational structure the deep penetration and continuous R&D of AI across supply chain, production, and logistics. The Snow King Brain is not a tool for showmanship but an operating system that compresses the cost of every cup of milk tea to the extreme.
02 The Snow King Brain: A Full-Chain Cost-Optimization System
Mixue defines the "Snow King Brain" as a full-chain cost-optimization system. Its core solution forms a closed loop around three scenarios—supply chain, logistics, store—with each function backed by clear data:
1. Supply-Chain Forecasting: Taming Agricultural-Price Volatility
The "Snow King Brain" integrates multi-dimensional info—POS data from 48,000 stores, 72-hour weather forecasts, regional customer profiles—to build a demand-forecasting model. At the Anyue lemon base, 543 standardized planting SOPs keep the sugar-acid ratio stable in the 7.5–8.3 range, while a 20,000-ton strategic reserve handles yield swings. This system achieves real-time linkage of "consumer feedback → supply-chain response"—when keywords like "pulp not fresh" appear in negative reviews, it automatically compresses the material turnover cycle from 5 to 3 days.
Results show that through scaled procurement and AI forecasting, Mixue's core-material cost is 10%–20% below market; in 2024 its five self-built factories produced 1.65 million tons of materials, equivalent to consuming 4,500 tons of sugar, 800 tons of tea, and 270 tons of fresh fruit daily.
2. Smart Logistics: Reaching 90% of County Towns Within 12 Hours
In logistics, the "Snow King Brain" built 19 regional warehouses and a cold-chain network covering 97% of stores; its intelligent route-planning keeps fresh-material transport loss below 1.8%, only one-third of the industry average. The Zhuzhou (Hunan) cold-chain distribution center delivers materials sorted at 4 a.m. to 90% of the nation's county towns within 12 hours; the smart replenishment system compresses franchisee ordering response to 48 hours, raising inventory-turnover efficiency 30% above the industry average.
Overseas markets replicated this logic: among 4,733 Southeast Asia stores, Indonesia's 2,600 stores use lemons from the Guangxi planting base and jam directly supplied by the Henan factory, with logistics cost 22% lower than local brands.
3. Store Operations: Replacing Human Experience with Technology
Store-end AI shows a dual "hardware + software" innovation. On hardware, 12-channel automatic tea machines scan orders and execute standardized recipes automatically, with a cup-out efficiency of 8 seconds per cup; on software, the intelligent system connects over 200,000 devices, monitors inventory levels in real time, and pushes franchisees' average loss rate down to 2.5%.
The AI site-selection system raised new-store profit probability to 82% and county-market penetration above 78%, supporting a layout of over 7,500 township stores with per-store daily sales above 400 cups. This digital capability lets Mixue form a dense network in lower-tier markets; Jiangsu, Shandong, and Guangdong each have over 2,500 stores, forming an efficient "one warehouse per province" delivery system.
Mixue's AI practice reveals an industry truth: in a low-price market with only 32.4% gross margin, technology is not a plus but a survival necessity. The essence of the "Snow King Brain" success lies in turning AI into a "cost-control operating system," and this practice offers three major revelations to the industry:
Vertical supply-chain integration creates an irreplicable cost advantage. From the Anyue (Sichuan) lemon base (15% of the county's planting area) to the Dakai International industrial park in Wenxian (Henan) (filling 24,000 cups of material per hour), Mixue built "farm to store" full-industry-chain control. This capability makes 85% of its revenue come from selling ingredients to franchisees, forming a sustainable cash-flow system that supports the asset-light expansion of 53,000 stores.
Digitalization must penetrate the entire business process. From soil sensors at the Anyue base to energy monitoring of in-store ice-cream machines, the data loop pushes per-cup logistics cost to 0.3 yuan (industry average 0.8 yuan), and self-made equipment cost is 41% below market. The 2024 financial report shows that "Snow King Brain" optimization raised inventory turnover 18% and cut delivery cost 5.2%—these precise figures are the confidence behind the 6-yuan milk tea's pricing.
Organizational assurance determines how deeply technology lands. The Snow King Aizhihui Technology Co. with RMB 50 million registered capital, a CTO-directly-managed tech team, and a cold-chain network covering 97% of stores—these organizational designs ensure AI does not stay conceptual. When functions like smart replenishment and AI quality inspection become franchisees' daily tools, the scale effect of technology naturally emerges; this is exactly the core capability letting Mixue achieve 57.6% store coverage in county markets.
From AI quality inspection at the Jiaozuo factory to smart delivery in Southeast Asia, Mixue proves with the "Snow King Brain" that competition in the low-price segment has upgraded from "price war" to "technology war." When every penny of cost saving comes from algorithm optimization, the industrialization revolution of China's tea-drink industry is quietly completing inside a 6-yuan cup of lemonade.
03 Lessons from the Case: Technology Is Not a Tool for Showmanship but a Survival Necessity.
Mixue's AI practice reveals a plain truth: in a low-price segment with only 35% gross margin, technology is not a tool for showmanship but a survival necessity. Its success essence lies in turning AI into a "cost-control operating system," achieving three major breakthroughs through the "Snow King Brain":
First, reform the agricultural supply chain with industrial thinking, using AI forecasting to hedge agricultural-price volatility; second, break store operations into "standardized modules + intelligent execution," reducing dependence on human skill; third, build global digital infrastructure so that 46,000 stores respond in coordination like single-cell organisms. This approach perfectly interprets the essence of "filling capability gaps rather than manufacturing concepts," offering restaurant chains a replicable technology-adoption template.
As AI becomes the invisible infrastructure of every 6-yuan cup of milk tea, Mixue's case is redefining the competition rules of the food-service industry: not burning capital, but saving via data; not deciding by experience, but optimizing by algorithm. This silent AI defensive war may be the most worth-telling story of technological breakthrough for China's new consumer brands.
