霸王茶姬 蜜雪们为何看上了这个千亿赛道

This article examines the recent industry trend where dozens of major bubble tea brands have collectively entered the 1-trillion-yuan ice cream market, analyzes the driving forces behind the move, and outlines key challenges the new model faces. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Well-known bubble tea brands including Chagee, Mixue, Heytea, Goodee and CoCo have all launched new ice cream products, many of which sold out immediately after launch. Chagee's first new ice cream product in Shanghai generated over 2 million impressions on Xiaohongshu, and consumers queued for Mixue's new product until 1 a.m., showing extremely high consumer enthusiasm.

2. The core advantages of adding ice cream to bubble tea brands' product lines are that shared supply chain raw materials can cut R&D and procurement costs by 30% to 50%, fill revenue gaps during off-peak business hours, lift average order value, and attract young consumers to visit and share on social media through visually appealing creative designs.

3. The current "bubble tea + ice cream" model has notable flaws: most products only follow the trend of fancy designs, leading to severe flavor homogenization; the category is also highly seasonal, making it difficult to become a core stable long-term profit driver for brands.

This article systematically breaks down the industry trend, business logic and existing challenges of bubble tea brands entering the ice cream market, with key takeaways for brands as follows:

1. Consumer trend and market space: Ice cream is currently a 1-trillion-yuan growth market. China's ice cream market reached 183.5 billion yuan in 2024, and is projected to surpass 200 billion yuan by 2027. It has emerged as a new growth opportunity amid the cutthroat saturated bubble tea market, with consumers showing preference for visually appealing, creatively designed products that integrate bubble tea-specific flavors.

2. Product development and operational advantages: Brands can reuse core raw materials from their existing bubble tea supply chains, including milk bases, tea bases and fruits, to cut R&D and procurement costs by 30% to 50%. They can also replicate popular existing bubble tea flavors to maintain user recognition and shorten product development cycles. In addition, ice cream helps fill off-peak revenue gaps, lift average order value, and generate organic social buzz to drive foot traffic.

3. Risk warnings: Brands need to avoid pitfalls including flavor homogenization, seasonal sales volatility, high cold chain loss costs, and rapid decay of new product hype, rather than only superficially following the trend.

For bubble tea sellers, this article summarizes the growth opportunities and key risks of entering the ice cream category, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Market opportunity: The bubble tea industry has entered a phase of saturated, cutthroat competition, with net new store growth turning negative and limited room left for growth through aggressive expansion. Ice cream, as a 1-trillion-yuan growth market that overlaps with bubble tea in both target customers and supply chains, is an ideal new category for sellers to seek new growth.

2. Operational benefits: Ice cream can be produced by reusing existing raw materials in stores, cutting R&D and procurement costs by 30% to 50%. It fills revenue gaps during off-peak hours such as early morning and late evening, utilizes idle labor and store space, and pairs with bubble tea to lift average order value from the original 15-20 yuan to around 30 yuan. Visually appealing new products also drive more foot traffic to stores.

3. Risk warnings: Most current new ice cream products rely on appearance to attract traffic, leading to severe flavor homogenization. Ice cream is also a highly seasonal category, with sky-high sales in summer that drop off sharply in autumn and winter. Combined with high costs for cold chain storage and raw material loss, new products gain hype quickly but fade just as fast, making it difficult to build long-term core competitiveness. Sellers should enter the category carefully based on their own actual conditions.

For factories that supply raw materials to bubble tea brands, this article outlines new business opportunities and production directions in the ice cream track, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Production and design requirements: A large number of bubble tea brands are entering the ice cream market en masse, and the core raw materials for ice cream overlap heavily with those used for bubble tea, including milk bases, tea bases, fruits, toppings and syrups. Existing factories that already supply these raw materials do not need to make large-scale modifications to their production lines—they only need to adjust product specifications to adapt to ice cream production.

2. Business opportunities: The ice cream market is a 1-trillion-yuan growth market, reaching 183.5 billion yuan in 2024 and projected to surpass 200 billion yuan by 2027. The entry of large numbers of bubble tea brands will drive new demand for ice cream-related raw materials, packaging and cold chain equipment. Factories can expand relevant business lines to target the new needs of bubble tea brands.

3. Development insights: Consumers now prefer ice cream with distinctive flavors and attractive appearance. Factories can cooperate with brands to develop customized raw material products to help brands build differentiation, and optimize supporting supply solutions to meet ice cream's cold chain storage requirements, to improve their own competitiveness.

For all types of service providers serving the bubble tea industry, this article summarizes the development trends of the ice cream track, the core pain points of brand clients and relevant opportunities, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Industry development trend: The bubble tea industry has entered an era of saturated cutthroat competition, and a large number of brands are entering the 1-trillion-yuan ice cream market to seek new growth. The ice cream market will continue to expand in the coming years, driving sustained growth in demand for related supporting services, creating broad development prospects for the track.

2. Core customer pain points: The core pain points brands face when entering the ice cream track include controlling R&D and procurement costs, addressing seasonal sales volatility, building differentiated products, reducing cold chain storage and raw material loss, and extending new product lifecycles.

3. Solution directions: Service providers can develop targeted supporting services. Supply chain service providers can launch ice cream production supporting solutions that leverage bubble tea brands' existing raw material reuse model. Marketing service providers can help brands build differentiated products and marketing topics based on their existing brand IP. Cold chain service providers can launch small-scale low-temperature storage solutions tailored for bubble tea stores to help brands reduce loss costs.

For platform operators with bubble tea-related businesses, this article summarizes the core needs of merchants entering the ice cream track, outlines actionable optimization directions for platforms, and notes risks to avoid, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Core merchant needs: A large number of bubble tea brands and merchants are looking to enter the 1-trillion-yuan ice cream market. They need low-cost supply chain matching services, support for new product operation and promotion, cold chain storage supporting resources, and operational guidance to avoid risks such as homogenized competition and seasonal volatility.

2. Actionable optimization directions for platforms: Platforms can launch dedicated ice cream track investment attraction sections to match bubble tea brands with raw material and equipment service providers, to reduce matching costs for merchants. They can also launch traffic support programs for new ice cream products, to help drive exposure and traffic for brands' visually appealing new products and amplify their traction.

3. Risks to avoid: Platforms should proactively remind merchants that the ice cream track has flaws including rapid hype decay and strong seasonality, avoid blindly encouraging merchants to scale up production, and guide merchants to enter with a light-asset model based on their existing supply chain conditions, to prevent massive inventory loss for merchants.

For catering and retail industry researchers, this article presents the latest industry movements, business model logic and new emerging challenges in the bubble tea industry, with key research takeaways as follows:

1. New industry movement: The bubble tea industry has entered a phase of saturated competition, with net new store growth turning negative. The mainstream industry growth logic has shifted from growth via aggressive store expansion to low marginal cost expansion through "existing advantages + new categories". The collective entry of large numbers of bubble tea brands into the ice cream market is a typical example, and the "bubble tea + ice cream" hybrid format has become a new industry growth direction.

2. New business model logic: This model relies on reusing raw materials from existing supply chains to achieve expansion at near-zero marginal cost. It simultaneously improves store space utilization during off-peak hours, lifts average order value, and drives foot traffic through organic social buzz generated by new products. It perfectly aligns with bubble tea brands' existing resource advantages and has high replicability.

3. New questions for future research: This model still has clear shortcomings at this stage, including severe product flavor homogenization, large seasonal volatility, high cold chain loss costs, and short new product lifecycles, making it difficult to become a stable long-term core competitiveness. How to address these challenges will be a key new direction for in-depth industry research in the future.