Breaking down the 2025 financial reports of four leading new tea beverage companies: Who is surging, who is “crossing the tribulation”? Where does all the money go?

Ask AI · How can a tea beverage brand achieve a profit surge through supply chain optimization to expand by franchising?

Our reporter from The Paper: Wang Ziwei Editor from The Paper: Zhang Yiming

Recently, several leading companies in China’s new tea beverage industry—Mixue Group (Mixue Bingcheng Co., Ltd.), Guming, Chabaidao, and Nayuki’s Tea—have successively released their 2025 “report cards.” The four “report cards” vary in quality, collectively showing the “icy-hot split” in the tea beverage industry.

Mixue Bingcheng earns nearly RMB 6 billion in net profit in a year; Guming’s net profit doubles; Chabaidao sees a major rebound in net profit despite slowing revenue growth; while Nayuki’s Tea is still struggling to adjust while continuing to incur losses, and its store footprint is starting to shrink.

Photo source: The Paper’s media database, Huang Songlun

Even though they all sell the same kind of milk tea, in their 2025 financial reports the four companies deliver very different “answers.” Behind the divergence in revenue, net profit, and store data are differences in each brand’s strategic choices: this year, Nayuki’s Tea—born with a direct-operation gene—struggled between building a “third space” and opening up franchising, and ultimately made its choice; while other tea beverage brands, which grew in lower-tier markets and rely mainly on franchising, are wrapped in the new tea beverage “shell” and have grown into highly efficient supply-chain giants.

Icy-hot separation in revenue and net profit

According to 2025 financial report data, among the “three giants” racing ahead in lower-tier markets and Nayuki’s Tea—with direct-operation DNA—there is a seemingly bottomless gulf between revenue and net profit.

In 2025, Mixue Bingcheng and Guming’s revenues were RMB 33.56 billion and RMB 12.91 billion respectively, both exceeding the scale of RMB 10 billion; their net profits were RMB 8B and RMB 5.93B respectively. Mixue Bingcheng, backed by a network of nearly 60k stores worldwide, earns nearly RMB 6 billion in net profit in one year. Guming’s net profit grew an astonishing 108.6% year over year. From the financial reports, Guming’s growth engine comes from deep cultivation of lower-tier markets—its proportion of township and village stores has already risen to 44%. Also a milk tea brand dominated by franchising, Chabaidao achieved RMB 821 million in net profit in 2025, up more than 70% year over year.

In 2025, when Mixue Bingcheng, Guming, and Chabaidao were raking in money day after day, Nayuki’s Tea was undergoing a painful “trial by ordeal.”

In 2025, Nayuki’s Tea’s revenue fell 12% year over year to RMB 3.12B; not only did it record a net loss of RMB 243 million, but its store base shrank along with revenue. In 2025, Nayuki’s Tea’s total number of stores decreased from 1,798 to 1,646. This year, Nayuki’s Tea proactively entered a period of store closures and optimization and tightened the franchising policies it had originally placed high hopes on. By the end of 2025, Nayuki’s Tea had only 358 franchised stores, a modest increase of 13 stores over the full year.

From the financial reports, in 2025 the entire industry showed common characteristics: average ticket size kept hitting lower levels while the number of cups served surged wildly. Guming’s average number of cups sold per store per day rose from 384 cups in 2024 to 456 cups in 2025; in the same period, Nayuki’s Tea’s average number of orders per store per day also rose from 270.5 to 313, but the average sales value per order fell from RMB 26.7 to RMB 24.4.

Where does the profit powerhouse’s money come from?

Judging from the revenue structure of Guming, Chabaidao, and Mixue Bingcheng, their main profit comes from franchisors. A franchise-dominated tea beverage brand is more like a B2B (business-to-business) supply-chain company wrapped in the “new tea beverage” exterior.

With the same revenue model, Guming and Chabaidao maintain nearly the same gross margin levels: in 2025, Guming’s gross margin was 33.0%, while Chabaidao’s gross margin was 32.5%.

On March 30, Lingyan Management Consulting’s chief consultant and catering and fast-consumption industry analyst Lin Yue told reporters from The Paper: “The gross margin of a franchised brand business is jointly determined by the brand party’s profit demands and the franchisee’s survival bottom line. This roughly 30% gross margin gap might be the subtle balancing point between the brand and the franchisees.”

The difference is that revenue from franchisees varies across companies. More than 90% of Mixue Bingcheng and Chabaidao’s revenue comes from selling products and equipment to franchisees; while Guming’s sales of products and equipment account for 79% of revenue, and it also has as much as 20.35%—more than RMB 2.6 billion—of revenue coming from franchise management services. Focusing on operational services may be the core reason its net profit performance looks outstanding.

By contrast, franchise-dominated tea beverage brands all excel in their supply chains without exception—and keep deepening that focus.

A disclosure item strongly correlated with supply-chain spending is cost of sales. Mixue Bingcheng, Chabaidao, and Guming’s cost of sales were RMB 60k, RMB 4.33B, and RMB 23.11B respectively, accounting for 68.8%, 67.5%, and 67.0% of total revenue, respectively.

Mixue Bingcheng has achieved 100% self-produced core beverage ingredients, with five production bases and 28 warehouses. The financial report shows that Mixue Bingcheng is also continuously increasing investment in heavy assets; among its capital commitments, about RMB 301 million is mainly used to build plant facilities and purchase equipment. Guming has 24 warehouses; 75% of its stores are within a 150-kilometer radius of warehouses, and 98% of its stores achieve “deliveries every two days.” With such extremely high physical density, Guming compresses delivery-to-store distribution costs to below 1% of GMV (gross merchandise value). Chabaidao, meanwhile, has set up 26 warehousing-and-delivery distribution centers nationwide, and about 93.7% of stores deliver the next day after placing an order.

By comparison, Nayuki’s Tea, which has not formed scale economies, “bleeds” partly due to higher supply-chain costs and the increase in takeout orders. According to financial disclosures, in 2025 Nayuki’s Tea’s material costs reached RMB 3.64B, accounting for 34.0% of total revenue. High wastage from high-quality fresh fruit and fresh milk simply cannot be spread out like for brands with tens of thousands of stores.

In 2025, within the revenue of Nayuki’s Tea’s company-operated stores, takeout orders accounted for as much as 52.6% (RMB 1.47B), while on-site orders at the stores dropped to only 9.3%. The rise in takeout orders is not good news for Nayuki’s Tea, which emphasizes the “third space” offline experience—and it also causes the company to pay the delivery service fee to third-party platforms totaling as much as RMB 462 million, representing 10.7% of total revenue.

Where did the money from the “cash cow” go?

The new tea beverage giants with exceptionally strong overall operating capabilities have long transformed into well-funded “cash cows.” In this 2025 “report card,” all four companies have a large pot of cash on their books. Mixue Bingcheng’s cash and cash equivalents, time deposits, restricted cash, and financial assets measured at fair value with changes recognized in profit or loss totaled RMB 19.99 billion; Guming’s cash and cash equivalents, time deposits, and large-denomination certificates of deposit totaled over RMB 10 billion; Chabaidao’s cash and cash equivalents reached RMB 2.01B; and Nayuki’s Tea’s cash and cash equivalents, time deposits, and large-denomination certificates of deposit totaled over RMB 2.6 billion.

They all have abundant cash, but different companies have taken entirely different paths.

Besides deepening its supply chain, Mixue Bingcheng hopes to replicate its supply-chain capabilities into other categories. In its 2025 financial report, Mixue Bingcheng disclosed a deal: it acquired the fresh beer brand Fulujia and merged its 1,354 stores. Lin Yue told reporters that Mixue Bingcheng’s acquisition of Fulujia is essentially “integrating left pocket into right pocket,” with the purpose of enabling each other along the supply chain—for example, sharing production bases, jointly using warehousing and cold-chain logistics systems, and expanding procurement advantages. At the same time, Mixue Bingcheng stores are also actively promoting smart beverage dispensers so that automation equipment frees up more labor and improves efficiency. As of now, smart beverage dispensers have been deployed across more than 13,000 stores.

Guming, on the other hand, in early 2026 in its headquarters city of Hangzhou, plans to invest RMB 455 million to purchase a plot of land for building a new operations headquarters building. Industry insiders believe that after rushing to reach the scale of ten thousand stores, Guming urgently needs a physical space to support its operational command center—further consolidating its digital management and supply-chain scheduling for franchisees. Chabaidao’s cash is used more to maintain on-balance-sheet liquidity and to make fine adjustments to its supply chain.

Chabaidao emphasized in its financial report “AI (artificial intelligence) automated inspection” and a “smart replenishment and smart preparation system” covering 8,000 stores. Entering 2026, Chabaidao has been piloting in some cities and beginning to roll out a coffee category.

Behind that cup of milk tea in consumers’ hands is the giants’ competition built on supply-chain capabilities and other asset bases. When the number of stores in China is nearing the ceiling, how much expansion pressure can an enormous franchisee system still bear? Clearly, new challenges are only just beginning.

The Paper Daily Economic News