Mixue on the march: ice-cream serves soft power for China in Indonesia

CHINA’S Mixue has dominated South-east Asia’s ice-cream and tea businesses for five years, since opening its first outlet in Vietnam in 2018. It has 22,500 stores in China and about 1,000 in several South-east Asian countries including the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia. In comparison, despite having been around much longer, Starbucks has 10,000 outlets and McDonalds has around 9,100 restaurants throughout the South-east Asian region.

In Indonesia, Mixue has become a trend on social media platforms. People are posting about their daily cravings for Mixue products and making jokes and memes – it is common to find the brand among Twitter’s trending topics.

The joke in the region goes that you have to keep an eye on any vacant space in your neighbourhood, because it will soon turn into a new Mixue outlet. There are three contributing factors behind Mixue’s success story in Indonesia: supply chain efficiency, affordable product prices and the ease with which a franchise can be started.