Today I Learned: A Chinese Bubble Tea Shop Has Overtaken McDonald’s as the World’s Largest F&B Chain
For years, McDonald’s has dominated the global food and beverage industry, standing far and above everyone else when it comes to store count. As of the end of 2024, McDonald’s reported a total of 43,000 locations in over 100 countries worldwide. Its nearest competitor in the global foodservice retail industry is Starbucks, which had about 40,200.
However, believe it or not, there has risen a challenger that has overtaken both F&B behemoths going into the new year.
Chinese Bubble Tea Shop, Mixue, Is Largest F&B Chain in the World
With about 45,300 locations worldwide, Chinese bubble tea and ice cream brand Mixue has come seemingly out of nowhere to surpass McDonald’s as the world’s biggest F&B chain by store count. The company made the claim in a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange last month in preparation for an initial public offering later this month.
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According to Momentum Works, a Singapore-based market analysis firm, Mixue was at fourth place in 2023 and leapfrogged over McDonald’s and Starbucks and third placer Subway within only one year. KFC rounds out the top five globally.
Mixue said that, across all of its stores, it sells a mind-boggling 5.8 billion cups a day.
Of Mixue’s 45,300 locations, about 3,700 are of the Mixue brand in China and 2,900 are of a coffee sub-brand called Lucky Cup. The remaining stores are spread out across 11 countries outside of China, with Indonesia and Vietnam having the most in overall store count.
In the Philippines, according to its official Facebook page, there are currently 100 branches of Mixue.
Just for comparison, homegrown brand Jollibee reported having a total of about 9,600 stores across its many brands—including Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Panda Express, Chowking, Mang Inasal, Greenwich, Tim Ho Wan, and many others—as of September 2024.
However, in terms of gross merchandise value (GMV), or the total value of goods sold to customers, Mixue slides down to fourth place with $6.5 billion. At the top is Starbucks, which is the runaway winner at $55.5 billion, followed by Inspire Brands (which owns chains like Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin’, and Baskin-Robbins, among others) at $14.9 billion, and Canadian brand Tim Horton’s at $7.5 billion.
Founded by Chinese businessman Zhang Hongchao when he was 21 years old, Mixue is currently valued at around $2.9 billion according to Forbes based on reports submitted by the end of September 2024.
The company is looking to raise as much as $500 million in its IPO.
