Mixue, the world’s biggest fast-food chain, has landed in the U.S. What is it and how does it taste?
NEW YORK — The scarlet facade is hard to miss. Months after surpassing McDonald’s as the biggest food chain in the world, Mixue arrived in the United States in December, with one of three locations landing between the drab exteriors and grubby sidewalks of Manhattan’s Herald Square.
The timing was inopportune. When this reporter visited Mixue (pronounced ME-shway) for the first time, New York was trapped in amber, with subzero temperatures forcing many residents to stay home and wait out the cold. We were all thawing out. Who could possibly want soft-serve, milk tea and lemonade in weather like this?
Plenty of people, as it turns out. Around dinnertime on an early-February evening, Mixue was packed to the brim with teenagers, adult friend groups and parents huddled around. In China, the chain, founded in 1997, is ubiquitous for its ultracheap vanilla cone, fruity drinks and bubble teas — prices tempered, in part, by how the company sells the raw materials and equipment to its franchisees. Its appearance in Manhattan (and Los Angeles) follows in the example of other beverage-focused chains, such as Luckin Coffee and Chagee, which have ventured stateside as low-cost alternatives to Starbucks and Kung Fu Tea.
Mixue seems positively too big to fail. A chain with more than 50,000 locations worldwide can’t be wrong. (Right?) But one step into the Herald Square location, and I was already exhausted. The space feels designed to force you into a sugar coma. With checkered red-and-white walls, it was overwhelming in the same way a crowded subway platform can be. Another issue: What appeared to be an upstairs seating area remained closed through all of my three visits. My taste tests would have to be conducted either hovering with other customers waiting for their items or outside in the elements. There are no tables or chairs.
Upon entering, I was quickly introduced to Snow King, the chain’s tubby snowman mascot. Mixue’s answer to Colonel Sanders comes in the form of a sizable plastic statue that bears a striking resemblance to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man of “Ghostbusters” fame. A Snow King animation flew across the flat-screen TVs displaying the menu, recommending picks such as the Super Strawberry Sundae and Peach Oolong Tea.
His majesty was stationed next to a small, red boom box blasting Mixue’s jingle. At a taut 23 seconds, the song looped endlessly with a melody ripped from “Oh! Susanna,” of all sources. I asked the employee stationed behind the register if the repetitive jingle annoyed her. She smiled and told me defeatedly that she tries to forget it’s playing. “I love you, you love me,” the boom box cried out, occasionally skipping. “Mixue, ice cream and tea.”
There are 38 beverages and ice-cream-adjacent items on the Mixue menu, all of which begin at under $5 but rise with each added topping (taro balls, coconut jelly, pearls, pudding). On my first visit, the coffee and soft-serve were sold out by 6 p.m. A reliable, functional soft-serve machine would be a solid place for Mixue to gain an edge on McDonald’s stateside, where the Golden Arches count more than 13,500 of its more than 43,000 total locations.
I decided to start small with a cool Pearl Milk Tea ($3.99), which I ordered through one of the four self-service kiosks. For each of the drinks, I stabbed the straw through the artful rendition of Snow King on the lid, like I was puncturing a TV dinner with a fork. The tea itself was unremarkable — a heavy dose of brown sugar and somewhat textured tapioca pearls — but it was sweet enough to last me through the evening. The aftertaste rested in my throat for what felt like hours.
When I returned two days later, the shop had a line out the door, full of recently dismissed high-schoolers. I felt a little silly waiting for a frozen dessert on another frigid afternoon, but I had to try the signature $1.19 soft-serve. The vanilla cone arrived with three little swirls in a crisp, Styrofoam-like waffle cone. In my book, soft-serve should have a less-resistant texture than your typical ice cream scoop. Mixue’s offering was firm and icy. (The brand’s full name, Mixue Bingcheng, translates to “honey snow ice city.”) My mind wandered to the banks of dirty, hardened snow outside.
By my final Mixue visit, the city had warmed enough that the fresh lemonade — one of Snow King’s recommendations, of course — sounded appetizing. When I ordered it at a kiosk, along with the Peach Mango Jasmine ($3.49), I was prompted to select how much sugar I wanted from a range of zero to 200%. I tapped the “normal” option and shuffled out to a table in Greeley Square Park to imbibe.
My first sips of lemonade ($1.99) were supercharged with sugar but had none of the sour sharpness of great lemonade. Halfway through the drink, it began to taste more like a fruit juice. I shifted my attention to the peach mango concoction, which I was immediately fond of, as it reminded me of a canned mango juice that a Thai restaurant in my native Pittsburgh served. But as I continued to sip, the fruit tea lost some of its luster, and the mango chunks were locked in a losing battle with the heavy dose of ice.
The two beverages were forgettable enough that I decided to head back to Mixue for one final treat. Up to this point, I had avoided the sundae options, which are built on the lackluster soft-serve. But the Super Chocolate Sundae ($3.49) caught my eye, so I ordered one, with a topping of tapioca pearls (an additional $0.49) to give it a little kick. The young man working the soft-serve machine overloaded the sundae with chocolate syrup, which had the effect of taking some of the edge out of the soft-serve. I had a sugar headache, but the pearls kept calling me back. They were chewy and sweet, a clear highlight from my visits.
A certain despair is hard to overcome at Mixue. Do we really need cheaper, faster sweets on this scale? Garishness is built into the foundation of all types of fast-food chains, so the back-to-basics approach of Mixue’s menu should be a welcome break. Instead, the novelty here seems firmly tied to the price point. Unless you’re subsisting on a boba-only diet, the savings just aren’t convincing enough. But the chain’s global surge shows there’s always an audience for cheap sweets, so don’t be surprised if the Snow King arrives in your city sooner than later.