中国茶饮 别再道歉了

This article outlines the current development status and core issues of China's modern tea beverage industry, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Overall industry landscape: 2025 marked the "IPO Year" for China's modern tea beverage sector, when four leading brands including Mixue Ice City went public in a wave. Just one year later, however, valuations have broadly corrected, and most giants have seen steep market value declines. Mixue Ice City, for example, has lost 70% of its market capitalization from its peak, while Nayuki has become a penny stock and faced public criticism from minority shareholders. The industry as a whole has entered a critical transition period.

2. A distinct new industry phenomenon: Major tea beverage giants have issued public apologies in clusters, over issues ranging from food safety scandals, sold-out co-branded products, conflicts with overseas franchisees to poor stock performance. Many brands have turned apologies into a marketing gimmick to drive traffic, but the frequent apology trend is essentially a signal that the industry has entered cut-throat competition in a saturated, stock-based market.

3. Core industry contradiction: For years, the industry has relied on a growth model of scale expansion via franchising. Now that many brands have hit their 10,000-store targets, a host of problems have emerged. Old playbooks no longer work for new challenges, and the industry urgently needs to explore new growth paths.

This article analyzes existing contradictions and development trends of China's modern tea beverage industry, offering actionable insights for tea beverage brand operators. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Marketing takeaway: While apology-based marketing can drive short-term traffic, its frequent use indicates the sector has entered a stage of saturated stock competition. Long-term reliance on traffic gimmicks will cover up underlying growth problems and harm long-term brand development.

2. Channel expansion takeaway: The traditional model of building a 10,000-store franchise network has exposed clear flaws: conflicts between super franchisees and brands, rising profitability pressure for small mom-and-pop franchise stores, and stricter regulation that has only exacerbated tensions. Brands need to rebalance profit sharing between the brand and different types of franchisees.

3. Strategic takeaway: The industry has shifted from high-speed growth to value-focused transformation. Multi-brand and multi-category expansion tends to cause internal friction, and the food delivery price war has squeezed brand margins. Old strategies of copying overseas players like McDonald's and Starbucks are no longer effective, and brands need to develop new growth paths tailored to the Chinese market from the ground up.

This article outlines the current status, risks and opportunities in the modern tea beverage industry, offering strong reference value for sellers entering or already operating in the space. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Overall industry trend: After the wave of IPOs in 2025, the era of high-speed growth has ended, and the sector has entered a transition period of saturated stock competition. Sellers need to have a clear understanding of the industry landscape and avoid opening new stores blindly following trends.

2. Risk warnings: The 10,000-store expansion of leading brands has driven up store density and made high-quality locations increasingly scarce. Most brands prioritize existing and super franchisees when allocating resources, putting new small independent sellers under enormous competitive pressure. At the same time, brands' frequent new product launches and equipment upgrades pass costs onto franchisees, and stricter brand compliance checks have significantly increased the risk of fines and store closures.

3. Opportunity insights: The industry is in transition as old models collapse and new models are being explored, with a large number of new brands emerging. Small sellers should prioritize evaluating a brand's franchise policies, choose emerging brands with more reasonable profit sharing structures, avoid the cut-throat competition surrounding leading brands, and seize entrepreneurial opportunities during this transition period.

This article analyzes the phase shift in the modern tea beverage industry, offering key insights for supply chain factories serving the sector. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Shifts in production demand: Modern tea beverage brands have shifted from scale expansion to value-focused transformation, with leading brands increasingly pursuing multi-category and multi-brand layouts. This has raised higher requirements for supply chains, which now need to support multi-category operations and supply chain separation for different brands, driving sharply higher demand for flexible production capacity.

2. New business opportunities: Leading 10,000-store tea brands have already built their own in-house supply chain infrastructure and control upstream pricing power. Small and mid-sized supply factories can leverage the current industry transition window to partner with emerging tea brands that are exploring new growth models, and capture opportunities created as brands rebuild their supply chain systems. They can also develop cost-effective products tailored to meet small and mid-sized franchisees' demand for low-cost equipment and raw materials.

3. Transition insights: The growth logic of the modern tea beverage industry has changed. Supply chain factories need to accelerate digital upgrades to adapt to brands' new requirements for cost control and flexible supply, and improve their core competitiveness in the industry.

This article outlines the pain points and trends of the modern tea beverage industry during its transition, pointing out new business directions for service providers serving the sector. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Industry development trend: China's modern tea beverage industry has ended its period of rapid scale expansion and entered a critical stage of value-focused transformation. Amid saturated stock competition, both brands and franchisees have generated a large number of new service demands, and service providers can capture dividends from the industry transition to expand their business.

2. Core customer pain points: For brands, core pain points include balancing relationships between different tiers of franchisees, managing multi-brand and multi-category operations, rebuilding single-store profitability models, and post-IPO market value management. For franchisees, core pain points include accessing high-quality locations, controlling opening costs, and improving store operation capabilities.

3. Business expansion directions: Service providers can develop targeted products: for example, launch franchise relationship management consulting, digital store inspection systems, and transition strategy consulting for brands; and offer low-cost opening training and high-quality location matching services for small and mid-sized franchisees. This will align with current industry demand and open up new growth space.

This article analyzes core issues in collaboration between modern tea beverage brands and platforms, offering key reference for platforms expanding into the tea beverage business. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Existing problems in collaboration: Previous food delivery price wars launched by platforms drove massive traffic growth with the help of tea beverage brands, but they also significantly squeezed tea brands' profit margins and led to sharp drops in brands' net revenue per order. This has sparked widespread pushback from brands, many of which have adjusted their strategies to repair single-store profitability models and voiced discontent with platforms' high commission model.

2. Platform optimization direction: Platforms need to adjust their profit sharing mechanism with tea beverage brands, balancing platform traffic revenue with brands' profitability needs, to maintain long-term stable cooperation and prevent brands from leaving the platform.

3. Operations and risk mitigation: Amid the current industry transition, a large number of emerging tea brands have demand for expansion and customer acquisition. Platforms can launch targeted support policies to attract these emerging brands to settle on their platforms, while mitigating the risk of traffic decline caused by slowing growth among leading brands. By building a tiered brand matrix covering high, medium and low price points, platforms can enrich their tea beverage offerings and stabilize overall traffic.

This article dissects the latest developments and core issues in China's modern tea beverage industry, offering high value for industrial research. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Latest industry developments: In 2025, four leading modern tea beverage brands including Mixue Ice City and Guming went public in a concentrated wave, making 2025 the industry's "IPO Year". Just one year later, industry valuations have broadly corrected. JPMorgan has judged that the high-growth era for leading brands is drawing to a close, and the industry as a whole has entered a new phase of transition from scale growth to value creation. The industry-wide apology wave is essentially a reflection of collective industry anxiety born of path dependence.

2. Newly emerged core industry problems: The old industry playbook of franchise-based scale expansion to reach 10,000 stores has exposed multiple deep-seated problems: interest conflicts between super franchisees and brands, narrowing profit margins for small and mid-sized franchisees, internal resource friction from multi-brand and multi-category expansion, and industry-wide profit pressure from food delivery price wars. Old strategies of copying overseas chain models and leading industry peers can no longer solve these new problems.

3. New directions for further research: Two topics stand out as particularly worthy of in-depth research going forward: how Chinese modern tea beverage brands can transition from followers to industry definers, and develop new business models aligned with the characteristics of the Chinese market; and how to build a balanced interest distribution mechanism for franchise systems operating at the 10,000-store scale.