How Chinese drink chains are testing the limits of soft power

Makeda George steps out of a Mixue store in downtown Brooklyn, New York, clutching a bubble tea as she weaves through a crowd of teenagers. The local resident says she had been eager to try the brand after noticing a surge of new outlets opening in recent months.

“I decided to try the bubble tea. It was good,” she said, adding that she did not know it was a Chinese drink chain but figured it was Asian given the branding.

“Everywhere you go, every nook, every cranny, you just see them popping up.”

Across New York City and beyond, a new wave of beverage chains is expanding rapidly, bringing tea-based offerings, unique flavours and a design aesthetic distinct from American legacy brands such as Starbucks.

The new entrants share a different origin story: they are all Chinese-founded brands expanding their cultural footprint.

A few miles away in Sunset Park, Brooklyn’s largest Chinatown, HeyTea has adopted a sleeker Chinese-modern aesthetic with digital ordering screens, minimalist branding and carefully styled drinks, including jasmine-based teas.

And across town at a Mixue location in Manhattan’s Chinatown, thirsty customers wait for drinks like spring oolong milk tea, ordering from grab-and-go screens beneath the gaze of the chain’s mascot: an ice-cream-holding snowman whose face is plastered across the shop. Mixue’s chirpy theme song plays on a loop.