China’s boba behemoth has landed in Hollywood.
Mixue, the fast-growing megachain that boasts a bigger global retail footprint than McDonald’s, opened its first U.S. outpost on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame last month, selling drinks for less than $5 and ice cream for about $1.
Mixue spokesperson Xu Ping said in a written statement in Chinese that the company chose Hollywood as its first U.S. location because the “movie capital of the world” attracts both international tourists and local consumers year-round.
The store, Ping added, “aims to serve a diverse global consumer base and demonstrates the brand’s commitment to the American market.”
The Hollywood opening was followed in quick succession with locations in New York City’s Brooklyn, Koreatown and Chinatown neighborhoods. More Mixue stores are coming to California, Ping said.
The megachain’s entry into Los Angeles’ boba market comes at a time when local shops are struggling with rising costs driven by tariffs and economic uncertainty.
Mixue was founded as a shaved ice stand in 1997 in Zhengzhou, China, by college student Zhang Hongchao, who used money lent from his grandmother. The store’s Chinese name, Mi Xue Bing Cheng, translates roughly to “sweet snow palace.”
The store has more than 53,000 stores worldwide. The lion’s share are in China, but the company also has 4,700 locations across Australia, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
By comparison, McDonald’s has more than 44,000 stores worldwide, and Starbucks has more than 40,000.
Founder Zhang and his brother Zhang Hongfu, who control the company, have a combined fortune of $8.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Mixue is able to keep costs low because it is vertically integrated, said UCLA business administration professor Christopher Tang, a supply chain management expert.
Mixue owns the factories in China that produce its powders, syrups and fruit purees, giving the company greater control over pricing, Tang said. The store’s grab-and-go concept means lower rent costs. Having most of its locations concentrated in Asia means lower transportation costs.
Tang said the chain’s U.S. stores may be operating as loss leaders to expand its global footprint, test the American market, and demonstrate growth to investors after its listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange last year.
“They can use the profit in China to subsidize the loss in the U.S. for the sake of expansion,” Tang said. “Once [they] get the traction in the US, they can grow a little bit further. Once it grows to critical mass they will be able to sustain the operations.”
On Thursday evening, Mixue customers stood outside — the shop does not offer seating — eating soft serve and sipping on boba milk tea and the store’s signature grape drink with taro balls.
Several passersby snapped photos with Mixue’s inflatable snow “king” mascot that stands guard outside the store entrance. Across the street, actors posed on a red carpet, which had been rolled out on Hollywood Boulevard for the premiere of a Marvel TV show at the TCL Chinese Theatre.
Menu items range from $1.19 for the soft serve to $4.99 for its “super-triple” milk tea with tapioca pearls, pudding and coconut jelly toppings. Self-service kiosks let customers order in either Chinese or English and adjust the sweetness levels in drinks, which can range from 0% to 200%.
The chain appears to be aggressively seeking franchisees in California.
QR codes posted on the store’s front window, walls and sidewalk signs lead to an application website for prospective franchisees in California and New York. Opening a store requires an upfront investment between roughly $220,000 and $920,000, depending on size and location, according to the website. Mixue does not charge franchisees ongoing royalty or advertising fees.
Some Chinese customers were already familiar with the Mixue brand or longtime fans.
Tourist Kele Shi, a tech worker living in Washington who is from Shenzhen, China, decided to stop by its first U.S. location after seeing videos on YouTube and the Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu.
Shi had been in the Miracle Mile neighborhood earlier in the day to visit a museum but decided to go to the Walk of Fame to see whether the affordable soft serve was better than Ikea’s version.
“This is 80% of the reason we are here,” said Shi. “It’s good, not too sweet. That’s always a compliment for Asian people.”
Torrance resident Olivia Y, who grew up in China, was picking up five drinks for her friends after a climbing session in the neighborhood.
Y said she had fond memories of eating Mixue’s ice cream — her favorite menu item — and drinking fresh lemonade while pulling all-nighters as a student in Xi’An, China, and wanted to pay the U.S. store a visit after hearing about it on social media.
Other customers, like tourist Susannah Bartram, from Nottingham, England, had never previously heard of the chain. She had been strolling down the Walk of Fame, parched after taking a three-hour guided tour of Los Angeles, when the bright red store colors caught her eye.
“It’s colorful and accessible, and it’s a quick fix,” Bartram said, holding a cup of iced tea with large slices of lemon.
With pearl tea gaining popularity in her home country, “it is just nice to see something fresh,” she said.
On the other side of Hollywood Boulevard, local business Bopomofo Cafe’s location in the Ovation Hollywood shopping complex was relatively quiet on Thursday night.
Earlier this month, the Asian American cafe, which sells boba and snacks — including a sandwich described by L.A. Times food columnist Jenn Harris as the “apotheosis” version of McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish — shared on social media that it was struggling with rising costs of goods, including matcha powder and paper goods due to “trade wars and economic uncertainty.”
The cafe initially mulled a price increase, but decided to first try removing some items from its menu and offering a limited food menu an hour before it closes, said Philip Wang, who co-founded Bopomofo with partner Eric Wang in 2019. Philip Wang also co-owns the Asian American production company Wong Fu Productions.
Bopomofo’s classic milk tea costs $6.50, and blended drinks such as its guava matcha latte cost $8. Toppings are an additional 75 cents.
“[We] are not just chasing profits and a bottom line,” the cafe wrote in the Instagram post announcing the changes. “We’re also not a massive company with hundreds of locations (or thousands overseas) bankrolling our stores.”
Bopomofo’s Hollywood location opened in February as an experiment to see how it would perform in a tourist-driven mall, Philip Wang said.
As it approaches its first year in operation, the shop, located on the shopping center’s second floor, has seen less traffic than its other four locations in Southern California cities with significant Asian populations, such as San Gabriel and Irvine, he said. (A sixth location is to open in Downtown Disney this year.)
Philip Wang said he hasn’t seen noticeable impact on the store’s performance yet in the month since Mixue opened, noting that it’s still early. The holidays boosted traffic, Mixue opened in December, and business slowed in January — a dip he said is typical across the food and beverage industry.
He hopes Mixue’s presence in the U.S. might raise the profile of boba here and encourage more people to “expand their palette” and try local shops.
Bopomofo is no stranger to competing in dense markets: Its original location is San Gabriel, where there are boba and tea shops on every corner. Philip Wang said he’s confident that the drinks his cafe sells, which don’t use artificial flavors, syrups or powders, will continue to attract customers.
But “I would be lying if I said that [Mixue’s] not on our minds,” Wang said.
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