The summer of 2026 has arrived with a fierce reshuffling of China’s cold-drink landscape. Ice cream, once a mere topping or a secondary item on the bubble tea menu, is increasingly breaking away to claim its own independent storefronts. From premium artisan Gelato to budget-friendly soft serve, the country’s dominant tea brands are aggressively colonizing a frozen dessert territory once ruled by Western legacy players.
The most striking signal of this shift came recently when the lemon tea giant Linlee secured the operating rights for Häagen-Dazs’s brick-and-mortar stores in mainland China. Simultaneously, HeyTea has launched its independent Gelato brand, Silato, with standalone boutiques in high-end shopping malls. Even the budget king Mixue Bingcheng is decentralizing, planting thousands of dedicated 'Ice Cream Cabins' in university towns and lower-tier pedestrian streets.
This movement is a calculated escape from an oversaturated tea market. Data from 2025 shows that the growth rate for new-style tea brands has plummeted from nearly 20% to just 6.45%, with tens of thousands of stores closing their doors. Having failed to find sustainable growth in coffee or baked goods, tea brands have identified ice cream as a natural extension that leverages their existing infrastructure.
Economically, the pivot makes perfect sense. These brands already control the supply chains for high-quality dairy, fresh fruit, and tea bases, allowing them to produce premium ice cream at a fraction of the cost of traditional competitors. Furthermore, with Gelato margins often exceeding 70%, the category offers a lucrative cushion against the price wars currently devouring the margins of the milk tea sector.
However, the rise of domestic tea-branded ice cream comes at the expense of international stalwarts. Brands like Häagen-Dazs, DQ, and Baskin-Robbins have seen their store counts crater in recent years as local players move faster and cater more effectively to Gen Z tastes. The competition is no longer just about flavor, but about who can integrate frozen desserts into the broader 'lifestyle' consumption habits of young urbanites.
Despite the current enthusiasm, the industry faces the perennial 'winter problem.' China’s ice cream market is notoriously seasonal, with over 60% of revenue concentrated in four summer months. As tea brands invest heavily in independent ice cream boutiques, they risk inheriting the same high overhead and seasonal volatility that forced the retreat of the Western giants they are currently replacing.