In case you haven’t noticed, a lot has been happening in the Asian beverage space lately.
For starters, Mixue Ice Cream and Tea just became the world’s biggest F&B chain by number of locations, beating out both Starbucks and McDonald’s. Over the last three years, the Chinese chain has more than doubled its store count and wrapped up 2024 with a total of 45,000 units, according to Technomic.
So, what’s the recipe behind Mixue’s success? Unsurprisingly, value is one key ingredient.
The chain prices many of its sweet drinks and ice cream treats at 6 Chinese yuan, or around 83 cents – and its menu is as short as it is sweet.
Mixue has adopted an innovative franchising strategy as well, with much of the chain’s revenue coming from the supplies it sells to its franchisees.
Its franchising fees are also well below the average rates, which makes opening a Mixue franchise a relatively affordable endeavor – unlike producing matcha in Japan.
Across the world, matcha is in short supply, but it’s also more popular than ever.
Yelp searches for “matcha powder” increased a whopping 791% year over year in February while searches for “matcha” rose 180% during the period, according to the platform’s March Trend Tracker.
Although the traditional Japanese green tea has been around for a while now, its global appeal has soared in recent years.
The increase in demand is partially driven by its popularity among social media influencers like Jasmine and Freya Smith, two content creators who live in Tokyo and regularly post about Japanese culture and cuisine on Tik Tok.
In January, the sisters informed their audience of nearly 50,000 followers about the matcha shortage they’d noticed in their area.
This development likely played an integral role in the surge in Yelp searches in the weeks that followed, as matcha fans across the world attempted to stockpile their stash of the beloved green powder while they still had time.
The mass appeal of matcha is partially responsible for the international shortage, as it turns out.
According to Bloomberg, the export value of Japanese green tea (including matcha) hit a record high of $244 million last year, representing a year-over-year increase of roughly 25%, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries of Japan.
Tourism within the nation is also on the rise, with 37 million travelers visiting Japan in 2024 alone (and consuming their fair share of matcha), up 47% from the year before.
As a result, some Japanese tea sellers have instituted purchase limits in recent months, while others have temporarily stopped selling some of their matcha products altogether.
And then there are the supply chain issues. Case in point, the total volume of tencha, or the tea leaves that are specifically grown for making matcha, harvested in 2023 was just 78% of the amount produced in 2008.
To add insult to injury, many of the nation’s top tencha growers have begun to retire – with few successors waiting in the wings.
The amount of land available in Japan for growing tea leaves has also dwindled, while the costs of labor and production have risen.
Image: *angys* via Wikimedia Commons
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