The new variant in Indonesia: “Mixue fever”

Recently, I went back home (Indonesia) to celebrate the Lunar New Year with my family, and one thing that significantly catches my attention is the number of Mixue outlets there.

Sometime back, we wrote an article on “How did the “Pinduoduo of beverages” become a 20,000 store bubble tea juggernaut?” and “China’s largest drinks franchise opened 7,643 new stores last year”. We also launched a bubble tea report where we analyzed Mixue’s business model and how they build their business (LINK).

In our previous article, we mentioned that they have already established a decent presence in Indonesia around 317 stores by the end of March 2022. And fast forward to almost a year later now, Mixue Indonesia shared with CNBC that they have established more than 1000 stores across Indonesia.

Although I knew and heard a lot from my friends that Mixue has become the new “fever”, I never really experience it myself. And here are some on-the-ground insights of Mixue in Indonesia.

Everywhere you look, you can always see them

It’s everywhere, in malls, shophouses, train stations, anywhere near your house, on the side of the street, etc. We even did a comparison between the number of Mixue stores and Starbucks in Jakarta and check this out

You can see that Mixue is more evenly distributed compared to Starbucks where most of its stores are still concentrated in the central area. Mixue’s appearance even goes beyond just the city center.

They are at the malls

At the shophouses,

At someone’s house,

Next to an Indomaret

And there’s even a shop at the port (Port of Merak)

Essentially, they have sprouted everywhere in Indonesia

How are they building the blue ocean in the red ocean?

We all can agree that what Mixue doing is not new. The market is a red ocean where competitors can easily come and copy others. However, what many don’t see is how Mixue’s ability on creating the blue ocean in a red ocean market.

Let me elaborate more. Mixue’s actual USP is not their product, but the way their organization is set up. They are able to secure the end-to-end supply chain up to how managing their franchise.

In our last bubble tea report, we also mentioned that Mixue is not really a bubble tea store. It’s way more than that and we all can agree that they are very effective in managing and selling their inventory which later could impact the effective cost of the commodity.

And as predicted, new competitors will always pop up anytime. One of the most recent ones in Indonesia is called Ai-Cha. Indonesia is similar to China once something goes viral, you can see hundreds of others trying to copy, copy, and copy.

So how will Mixue navigate through the new competitions in 2023? Do check out our latest case study on how Meituan manage to overcome the intense war with 1000 group buy in “Meituan: Finding business clarity”.