Mixue Ice Cream & Tea Exposed for Serving Bug-Infested Drinks, Shop Owner: "No Problem, It's Fine"

Yet another food safety scandal has hit China's biggest budget tea chain — and once again, the response from the store is what has people talking.

Mixue Bingcheng Faces Another Food Safety Crisis

Insects have been found in a Mixue Bingcheng beverage yet again. As the first new-style tea chain to file for a public listing, the company has grown at a breakneck pace — but food safety complaints have been piling up just as fast.

Yesterday morning, the hashtag "Mixue Bingcheng exposed for insects in drinks, merchant's attitude sparks controversy" shot straight to the top of Weibo's trending list and has since racked up some 270 million views. The incident began when a customer in Xiantao, Hubei Province, said she found small black insects inside an unopened bottle of the chain's lemonade. The store's response was jaw-dropping: "What can I do about this? I'm not sure why insects appeared in the drink. There's no way to handle this, and it doesn't matter."

When asked about the incident, Mixue Bingcheng's headquarters customer service told a reporter from the Southern Metropolis Daily that it would verify the situation with the staff involved.

Public Outrage Over the Merchant's Response

Reactions online were swift and scathing. Many commenters argued that a business unwilling to take responsibility shouldn't be in business at all. "Such an outrageous attitude. At least apologize and offer a replacement drink! That shouldn't be difficult, right?" one user wrote, adding that this seemed to be only the latest in a string of food safety scandals for the brand this year — and that if it continued, the company would eventually go under.

Others were blunter. "The merchant's 'no solution' basically means the insects crawled in on their own and I can't help it. And 'it doesn't matter' means they won't kill you, so drink up," one commenter quipped. "How can anyone in the food business talk like this?" another asked. "To say 'no solution, it doesn't matter' out loud! Try drinking one of those insects yourself — they wouldn't even offer a replacement."

A Pattern of Food Safety Incidents

Those commenters have a point. According to incomplete statistics, from March to November 2022 Mixue Bingcheng appeared on Weibo's trending list over food safety issues an average of once every 15 days.

The company has been fined repeatedly for using expired frozen lychee juice, expired coffee powder, and other expired ingredients. It was fined 12,000 yuan over insects found in lemonade, and made headlines after wooden sticks and flies turned up in drinks. In August alone, the chain was repeatedly exposed over foreign objects in milk tea and insect eggs in tea bags.

Screenshots from the trending topics.

Company Background and Breakneck Expansion

Mixue Bingcheng was founded in 1997 in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. Built around ice cream and tea drinks, the brand expanded rapidly through franchising and rock-bottom pricing, targeting third- and fourth-tier cities. After surpassing 22,000 stores this year — the most of any new tea beverage chain in China — the company set its sights on becoming the first publicly listed new tea chain on the A-share market. Its parent company, Mixue Bingcheng Co., Ltd., had its listing application accepted and pre-disclosed its prospectus on September 22, 2022.

When Expansion Outpaces Management

The problem is that store management hasn't kept up with store openings. Food safety issues keep resurfacing no matter how often the company is called out. On the Black Cat complaint platform, Mixue Bingcheng has accumulated 4,139 complaints, most of them concerning foreign objects in food, poor staff attitudes, and difficulty getting refunds.

Service and Safety Are the Whole Business

The food service industry runs on one principle above all: service first. A good customer experience covers not just friendly staff but food hygiene, safety, and a clean environment. A chain that loses consumer trust over these basics is effectively losing its entire market. Only strict management and a genuine commitment to product and service quality will allow a company to grow sustainably.

Image source: Internet

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