Transcription
Imagine a fast-food chain that sells thirty-cent ice cream cones. That opens twenty new stores a day. And that, as of 2025, has more outlets than McDonald’s, KFC, or Starbucks. Its mascot is a smiling snowman. Its jingle went viral across TikTok. And in just nine months of 2024, it served over 7 billion items and reported almost $480 million in net profit on $2.6 billion in revenue. It’s called Meeshway. It’s valued at around $10 billion. And it’s quietly become the world’s largest food and beverage chain by store count.
This is the story of how Meeshway scaled from a street cart in central China to more than 45,000 locations across Asia. And how it did it without chasing premium customers, venture capital, or global headlines.
The company started in 1997, in Zhengzhou in Henan province. Zhang Hongchao, a young man from a poor rural family, opened a small shaved ice stall using money borrowed from his grandmother. For almost a decade, he ran a low-margin seasonal business, selling cold desserts in the summer and barely surviving in the winter. But in 2006, he introduced a soft-serve ice cream cone for just one yuan, about $0.15. That one product changed everything. People lined up. Word spread. And Meeshway’s identity started to form.
By 2007, Zhang opened his first formal storefront. His brother joined him and together, they began building Meeshway into a chain. The strategy was simple: keep prices low, expand everywhere, and do everything in-house. To make the business work year-round, they added fruit teas, milk teas, and lemonade. This made Meeshway competitive with China’s growing bubble tea market, but at half the price.
As early as 2008, the brothers committed to vertical integration. They built their own production plants. They sourced their own ingredients. They opened 26 warehouses and a nationwide cold chain that could deliver to nearly every city in China in under 24 hours. They even started growing their own fruit. That gave them control over quality and cost and allowed them to supply tens of thousands of franchisees without relying on third parties.
By 2014, they had 1,000 stores. By 2020, 10,000. Today, they’ve passed 45,000. And it wasn’t just about speed. It was about who they were targeting. While most Western food chains focused on China’s wealthier coastal cities, Meeshway expanded aggressively into lower-tier cities and rural towns. These areas had fewer options, lower spending power, and millions of young people looking for affordable treats. Meeshway gave them exactly that.
Unlike traditional franchises, Meeshway doesn’t take a cut of each store’s profit. It charges low entry fees, provides the storefront design and equipment, and makes its real money by selling ingredients, cups, and packaging to its stores. As of 2024, over 97 percent of Meeshway’s revenue comes from product sales to its franchise network, not from royalties. That’s the foundation of what the company calls a “heavy backend, light frontend” model. It’s also how they keep prices so low. Meeshway’s scale gives it supplier leverage. Its owned logistics keep distribution costs down. And its stores don’t need to mark up prices to be profitable.
There’s also branding. Meeshway’s mascot — a red-crowned snowman called the Snow King — is used everywhere. On signage, cups, delivery uniforms. The company leaned into meme culture early. Its marketing campaigns encouraged user-generated content and played well on China’s social media platforms. Its jingle — “I love you, you love me, Meeshway Ice Cream & Tea” — became a national earworm. It was remixed, memed, and sung by millions. In China, everyone knows it. In Indonesia, it trended on TikTok.
Meeshway became more than a brand. It became a feeling. A sweet little reward after a tough day. A way for people — especially Gen Z — to treat themselves without guilt. That’s part of what makes it work. It’s not aspirational. It’s accessible.
Then came Southeast Asia. In 2018, Meeshway opened its first store in Vietnam. Demand was instant. The product, the price, and the branding all clicked with local youth culture. By 2024, Meeshway had over 1,000 stores in both Vietnam and Indonesia. Expansion into Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines followed. In Indonesia, the brand grew so fast that even the president joked about it online.
The company used the same strategy it used in China: Low startup costs for franchisees. Affordable products for consumers. And a backend logistics system that eventually included localized warehouses and sourcing. They also localized their operations: Adjusting flavors to match local preferences, Navigating halal certifications in Muslim-majority countries and Tailoring pricing based on city-level income differences.
By 2023, Meeshway began testing developed markets. A flagship opened in Sydney. Then Seoul. Stores in Japan are next. But expansion into high-income countries brings new questions. Can Meeshway’s price-driven model work where labor and rent are expensive? Will a $1 ice cream still be profitable when costs are five times higher? And can the brand appeal to consumers used to higher-end cafés and dessert shops? Early signs suggest Meeshway is focusing on student-heavy neighborhoods and urban centers where its branding and price advantage can still resonate.
Meeshway’s story is unusual in today’s global business environment. It didn’t raise money from Silicon Valley. It didn’t build a tech platform. It didn’t position itself as premium. Instead, it used a basic but powerful formula: Make the product affordable. Build the supply chain yourself. And grow through franchisees, not capital. It’s not a model that works everywhere. But it worked in China. It worked in Vietnam. And it’s working across Asia.
For global operators, Meeshway poses a new kind of question. What happens when the world’s largest food chain doesn’t come from the U.S.? What happens when value and operational efficiency matter more than lifestyle branding? Western incumbents built empires by standardizing quality and selling aspiration. Meeshway built one by lowering cost and selling access. And if it continues expanding — even modestly — into developed markets, it could force a shift in how affordability and scale are valued in global F&B strategy. Not every chain needs to be premium to be powerful. And Meeshway proves that in today’s market, the most disruptive idea might not be new. It might just be cheaper.