Snow King, who has been soaring in the new tea market with its ultimate cost-effectiveness, wants to spend a lot of money to build a cross-border paradise? Recently, there has been a lot of news that Mixue Bingcheng will build a theme park in Henan. The source of this rumor is a series of recruitment positions related to the park project that Mixue Bingcheng recently released on the recruitment platform.
Radar Finance has learned that the positions recruited by Mixue Ice City are diverse, covering the park performing arts coordinator position, engineering management position (park project), park content screenwriter position, park peripheral product coordinator position, etc., with monthly salaries of more than 10,000 yuan.
It is not difficult to see from the job descriptions of the aforementioned positions on the recruitment platform that Mixue Ice City is most likely not recruiting for an ordinary brand event, but is trying to build a complete experience link around the IP of Snow King.
In fact, Mixue Ice City dares to build a theme park across borders, and its confidence largely comes from the Snow King IP that the company has carefully built over the years.
Looking back at the birth of Snow King IP, it was also subject to controversy and doubt in the early days, but now it has become the core asset for Mixue Ice City to build brand barriers, bringing extremely high recognition and influence to the brand.
In March last year, Mixue Group successfully landed on the Hong Kong stock market, starting a new journey in the capital market. As of the close of trading on February 10, its latest market value has exceeded HK$150 billion.
With the help of many franchisees, Mixue Bingcheng continues to expand its territory in domestic and overseas markets. However, Mixue Group, with more than 50,000 stores worldwide, also faces many challenges. The overall growth of the industry is slowing down, the market is becoming increasingly saturated, and excessive store density has led to increasing competition among franchisees, all of which are testing Snow King.
With a salary exceeding 10,000 yuan and recruiting talents, Snow King wants to build a paradise across borders?
Different from previous attempts at "theme stores" that have appeared occasionally in the industry, Mixue Ice City's recruitment of park-related talents this time may have greater business "ambitions."
Radar Finance learned that Mixue Bingcheng’s positions related to the project on the recruitment platform include the park performance coordinator position, the engineering management position (park project), the park content screenwriter position, the park peripheral product coordination position, etc.
The aforementioned positions are all located in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, the headquarters of Mixue Bingcheng, and the monthly salary range covers between 11,000 yuan and 24,000 yuan.
Recruitment information shows that the park content writer will participate in the park design process, build a complete story background and core narrative line around the Snow King IP, connect different attractions, theme areas, and interactive links into an immersive experience link, and continuously iterate content for festival activities and theme planning.
At the same time, the park content screenwriter is also responsible for the daily language design of the IP, including interactive language, scene-based lines, promotional oral broadcasts, etc., to ensure that the language style fits Snow King’s cute, friendly, and memorable core character.
It is worth mentioning that in the job requirements for relevant positions, the names of leading parks such as Disney and Universal Studios appear frequently, becoming an important benchmark for measuring candidates' abilities and experience.
For example, the park content screenwriter position clearly requires candidates to be familiar with the performance content logic of well-known domestic and foreign IP parks (such as Disney and Universal Studios).
The park performance coordinator position requires applicants to have more than five years of relevant cultural tourism or theme park performance project planning, operation or team management experience. Applicants with experience in IP management of large parks such as Universal, Disney, Chimelong, etc. are preferred.
The park peripheral product coordination position also has high requirements for experience. Applicants need to have more than five years of experience in IP derivative products or retail industry, and understand the operating models of domestic and foreign cultural and tourism IP peripherals such as Bubble Mart, Disney, and Universal Studios, and be able to accurately grasp the consumption preferences of parent-child and youth customers.
However, as of press time, Mixue Ice City has not disclosed key information such as the specific launch time, investment scale, project location and operation model of the theme park.
Mixue Bingcheng customer service said that it is not clear about the specific matters at present, and has recorded relevant issues and fed them back to relevant personnel.
The "2025 China Theme Park Competitiveness Evaluation Report" released by the China Theme Park Research Institute shows that the total investment in large theme parks is generally 1.5 billion yuan and above (but less than 5 billion yuan).
The total investment of extra-large theme parks is usually 5 billion yuan or more. Such a huge investment scale highlights the asset-heavy nature of the theme park industry.
Some analysts believe that the theme park layout of Mixue Ice City is a bold and forward-looking attempt to commercialize the full link of Snow King IP from the fiercely competitive tea beverage industry to the challenging cultural and tourism field. It is also an important exploration for the brand to seek a second growth curve in the context of increasing competition in the new tea beverage industry.
This move is expected to open up new business areas and profit growth points for Mixue Bingcheng, and further strengthen the brand's influence and user stickiness.
However, the aforementioned people further pointed out that Michelle’s cross-border layout of theme parks also needs to face the operating characteristics of the cultural tourism industry itself and the multiple risks of cross-border operations. Theme parks are a typical asset-heavy, slow-return industry. The huge scale of investment means that it is difficult to recover costs in the short term.
Although Snow King occupies a leading position in the new tea drinking circuit with tens of thousands of stores and has accumulated rich brand operation experience and a huge user base, it is still a fledgling newcomer to the unfamiliar amusement park industry.
The operation of a theme park involves many complex links, such as the safety management of amusement facilities, the optimization of visitor experience, the planning of theme activities, etc. Each link is very important. It is still difficult to determine whether the park project will bring a positive addition to the company's performance or drag down the company's cash flow, and it remains to be further observed.
How was the Snow King IP of the Qianyi Tea Drinking Empire created?
Mixue Bingcheng dares to deploy theme parks across borders, and its core confidence comes from the Snow King IP it holds tightly.
The birth of Snow King can be traced back to 2018. At that time, Mixue Bingcheng had been established for 21 years and was rapidly expanding in lower-tier markets with its cost-effective products. However, it faced the dilemma of low brand recognition and serious homogeneity.
To this end, Mixue Bingcheng launched this naive cartoon character holding an ice cream scepter and made him the lifelong spokesperson of the Mixue Bingcheng brand.
Since the birth of Snow King in 2018, Mixue Bingcheng has devoted all its efforts to continue to polish this IP, continuously launching limited skins and localized styles that adapt to different regional cultures. It has gradually formed an IP family including R&D Snow King, Aju Snow King, etc., and has frequently made appearances in the industry with its down-to-earth brand marketing capabilities.
However, tracing the origin and development of Snow King IP, this image has been accompanied by controversy since its birth. According to Hua Shan, the founder of Hua & Hua, when Hua & Hua created the image of Snow King and the entire symbol system, it encountered huge opposition. Many people thought the image of Snow King was "too low".
According to Lieyun.com, a designer from Mixue Bingcheng even resigned after seeing the proposal.
However, Hua Shan said that out of trust in Hua and Hua, the founder brothers of Mixue Bingcheng finally accepted the plan.
A year later, the boss of Mixue Bingcheng recalled the previous proposal meeting and still said he was "scared" with lingering fear. He said with emotion: "If Hua and Hua's plan had been rejected at that time, nothing would have happened today!"
In 2021, Mixue Ice City ushered in another highlight moment. With its magical melody, simple lyrics, and all-round communication online and offline, Mixue Bingcheng's theme song quickly set off the entire Internet. Topics related to the theme song have been hotly searched on major social platforms for many times. The popularity of Snow King IP has ushered in explosive growth.
Radar Finance learned from the Mixue Group’s prospectus that as of the latest practicable date, topics related to Snow King and the theme song “You Love Me, I Love You, Mixue Ice City Sweet Honey” had accumulated more than 19.1 billion and 9.5 billion exposures respectively on major social platforms. Such amazing data fully demonstrates the strong influence and widespread dissemination of Snow King IP.
It is worth noting that Mixue Ice City’s layout around the Snow King IP is no longer limited to tea drinks, theme songs and peripheral products.
In August 2023, Mixue Ice City launched its first animation "Snow King Arrives" with Snow King as the protagonist, and has since launched original animation works such as "Snow King: Fantasy Sandbank".
Some marketers pointed out that from the perspective of the way it became popular, the Snow King IP is quite similar to the popularity paths of other well-known IPs. They basically follow the logic of creating memes, netizens taking over the memes and making secondary creations, eventually forming popular memes to expand traffic and convert traffic into sales, thereby achieving rapid improvement in brand influence and maximization of commercial value.
We made a huge profit of 2.7 billion in the first half of last year, but we still face many challenges behind the glamour.
Although Mixue Ice City’s Snow King IP is gaining momentum and its theme park layout has aroused market expectations, Mixue Ice City still faces multiple challenges.
The financial report shows that in the first half of 2025, Mixue Group achieved revenue of 14.875 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 39.32%; net profit attributable to shareholders was 2.693 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 42.9%, and the two financial indicators once again achieved double growth.
As of the end of the first half of last year, Mixue Group's cash and cash equivalents were 8.405 billion yuan.
In terms of store layout, as of the end of the first half of last year, Mixue Group had 53,014 stores worldwide, including 48,281 stores in mainland China.
However, beneath the surface of glorious performance, Mixue Group also lurks many hidden worries.In the first half of last year, the number of franchise stores closed by Mixue Group reached 1,187, while the number of closed stores in the same period in 2024 was only 799, a year-on-year surge of nearly 50%.
Although the sinking market is an important base for Mixue Bingcheng, as the market gradually becomes saturated, its development space is also subject to certain restrictions.
In the first half of last year, in the Chinese mainland market, the number of Michelle Group stores in third-tier and below cities was as high as 27,804, accounting for 57.6% of the total number of stores in the mainland.
In contrast, there are only 2,356 stores in first-tier cities, accounting for 4.9%; there are 8,878 stores in new first-tier cities, accounting for 18.4%; and there are 9,243 stores in second-tier cities, accounting for 19.1%.
It is worth mentioning that while Mixue Group is conquering the market, it is also very common for multiple Mixue Bingcheng "brother stores" to appear in a commercial street.
Although an overly dense store layout increases the brand's market share to a certain extent, it may further intensify internal competition among franchisees, causing the profits of existing franchisees to be eroded, which is detrimental to the enthusiasm of franchisees and the long-term development of the brand.
At the same time, according to data released by the China Chain Store and Franchise Association, the growth rate of China's ready-made tea beverage market has entered a slowdown channel. The domestic new tea beverage market size is expected to slow down from 44.3% in 2023 to 12.4% in 2025, and the overall growth dividend of the industry will gradually narrow.
In 2025, major platforms will join in the "takeaway war" one after another, which will undoubtedly add to the popularity of the new tea drink market. Under the platform's subsidy policy, consumers can obtain tea drinks at ultra-low prices or even for free, which has stimulated sales to a certain extent and brought short-term performance growth to tea drink brands such as Mixue Bingcheng.
However, as the platform gradually reduces subsidies, consumers' purchasing behavior may be affected, and the performance of tea players may be affected to a certain extent.
Facing many challenges, Mixue Group is also actively looking for countermeasures and trying to find a second growth curve.
In October last year, Mixue Group announced that the company planned to acquire 53% of Fulujia’s shares by injecting 286 million yuan and transferring the equity of the original shareholders to get involved in the fresh beer track.
Tianyancha shows that at present, the actual controller of Fulujia (Zhengzhou) Enterprise Management Co., Ltd., the main operating company of Fulujia, has been changed to Zhang Hongchao, the founder of Mixue Bingcheng.
Some people believe that the beer industry is significantly different from the tea and coffee fields that Michelle is familiar with, and is more obviously constrained by drinking hours, audience groups, and laws and regulations. These factors may become challenges for Michelle Group to expand this business.
In the future, can the theme park of Mixue Bingcheng be successfully launched? Can the Snow King IP be successfully monetized in the cultural tourism industry and support Mixue Bingcheng's main tea business?