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\n Photo: Tammie Teclemariam\n <\/p>\n
This past Christmas Eve, it was the Snow King, and not Saint Nick, who came to town when the world\u2019s biggest restaurant chain<\/a>, Mixue (pronounced Me-shway), introduced its first two New York locations with a parade of caped snowmen \u2014\u00a0Mixue\u2019s mascot \u2014 marching through K-town and Times Square where billboards flashed<\/a> the chain\u2019s frosty icon and his ice-cream-cone staff. Though Mixue\u2019s Snow King is as white and puffy as Michelin\u2019s Bibendum, he represents another gastronomic extreme:\u00a0loss-leading, competition-undercutting pricing that has grown the tea and ice-cream franchise to more than 50,000 locations worldwide. As a guy leaving the Hell\u2019s Kitchen Mixue said last week, \u201cThis is the cheapest shop in China.\u201d<\/p>\n He was clearly disappointed. \u201cI just came back,\u201d the Brooklyn resident continued, saying that he had made his way to this New York location only out of curiosity. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t even go here in Asia,\u201d he assured me. Four young women visiting from New Hampshire during the tail end of winter break seemed to be more content. The leader of the group described herself as a boba fan with an agenda for her New York trip. Heytea<\/a>, visited earlier that day, had been a hit, but the quad was leaving Mixue underwhelmed since the fruit teas they\u2019d come to try had mostly sold out. They settled for simpler iced milk tea with coconut jelly.<\/p>\n Like the Brooklyn guy, I was also wondering how such a bargain concept would translate to Manhattan\u2019s famously expensive leases and extra-low margins. Mixue\u2019s $1.19 soft serve and $2 lemonade is an exciting proposition in 2026, but despite their popularity elsewhere, is \u201caffordability\u201d enough compared to the cheese foam and ube milk everyone is drinking at the city\u2019s other tea destinations? And is it even good?<\/p>\n On my first trip to Mixue\u2019s Hell\u2019s Kitchen outpost, where I met the New Hampshire tea fans, I didn\u2019t understand quite how \u201csold out\u201d the small shop was until it was my turn to order from the screen. I scrolled past a rainbow of unavailable floats and sundaes, and staff were closing down with more than an hour left before the official closing time. I left without ordering.<\/p>\n The next day I tried my luck at the Herald Square Mixue, which is clearly the New York flagship. It\u2019s not just bigger but, crucially, wraps around a highly trafficked corner of West 32nd Street and Broadway, where Mixue\u2019s theme song (an \u201cOh! Susanna\u201d rip-off<\/a>) can be heard from every point. Mixue sits directly across the street from Taiwanese brown-sugar and boba specialist Tiger Sugar<\/a> and is within view of a Heytea on Sixth Avenue, but, at 3 p.m. on a Friday, this was the only drink shop with a line.<\/p>\n I estimated 40 people ahead of me waiting to go inside and could feel the increasing gravity of newcomers joining from behind. Besides the fact that everything costs less than five dollars, another reason this line was so long was that almost everyone arrived with a buddy, if not a pack. I would have been concerned for the jacketless couple in front of me, both shivering with their hands in their pockets, if they hadn\u2019t been in the company of more adequately dressed friends, one of whom informed me it had been their idea to eat ice cream outside in January in the first place. \u201cI was dragged here,\u201d he said. Before I could follow up, all six of them ducked under the rope to join some more people closer to the front.<\/p>\n Of two young ladies with backpacks standing behind me, one had already been here twice while the other was a first-timer. \u201cIt\u2019s worth the wait,\u201d said the veteran, but, she added, the line wasn\u2019t anywhere as long on her earlier visits. \u201cI got ice cream,\u201d she said, \u201cbut what I want is peach oolong. They\u2019re always sold out.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Strawberry-jasmine tea and $1.19 soft serve. She would be out of luck on this day, too, though the scarcity wasn\u2019t as dire as in Hell\u2019s Kitchen. After 17 minutes of standing in line, I ordered a strawberry-jasmine tea and plain soft serve in a cone, which cost $4.23 after a $2.50 drink discount offered by the screen. Employees yelled numbers over the chatter, conversing with customers in English and Chinese. My drink was ready in less than five minutes, and I shuffled a few feet over to the ice-cream machines and waited for my number to be called again. Traffic might not have been organized beyond a rope that divided the room down the middle, but everything moved along efficiently and people seemed genuinely delighted with their treats, like the tall cups of ice cream drowned in iced coffee, which the shivering guy\u2019s group ordered in multiple. \u201cThey get you addicted and they jack up the price,\u201d said the formerly shivering man while reaching for his affogato.<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t complain about my simple cone, piped full of innocuously sweet and creamy ice cream on a crisp waffle cone. While attacking it on the sidewalk, I noticed two men who looked like the oldest people in the vicinity talking over matching ice-cream cones and lemonades. I approached them to see what brought them here. There was a reason they stood out from the crowd: One was Mixue corporate, the head of business development for the Americas, the other a franchisee of an upcoming location in Downtown Brooklyn, both all too happy to speak with me on the record about the brand\u2019s arrival.<\/p>\n I asked if the plan was to \u201cjack up the price,\u201d like the guy inside had said. \u201cOur prices in China haven\u2019t changed in the past ten years. Do you remember what Starbucks or McDonald\u2019s cost ten years ago?\u201d the representative said with practiced calm before holding up his lemonade loaded with sliced fruit. \u201cIn China, the average monthly income can buy 1,500 of these \u2014\u00a0this is a product that everybody can have.\u201d<\/p>\n EAT LIKE THE EXPERTS.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Grub Street newsletter.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/6e8f78850defa815f8e07156862733db80-IMG-7466.rvertical.w570.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Tammie Teclemariam\n <\/p>\n