There may be no more fitting home for the world’s biggest seller of cheap soft serve and drinks than Richmond’s Diabetes Plaza.
Multiple sources have told us that Mixue, the Chinese mega-chain famous for its insanely cheap soft serve, is eyeing its first Canadian location in the Richmond Union Square Shopping Centre.
This plaza is well known by locals as Diabetes Plaza because of the high concentration of bubble tea and dessert shops.
Richmond is the obvious place for a brand like this to test Canada, given the size of its Asian community and its appetite for exactly this kind of drink and dessert chain.
For anyone who has not heard of Mixue yet, the scale is genuinely hard to picture.
The company now runs more than 47,000 stores across 13 countries, which by store count makes it the world’s largest fast food chain, bigger than even McDonald’s.
Founded in 1997, it built that empire on one promise: good taste at good prices.
And that meant cheap but tasty soft serve and tea drinks at prices anyone can afford.
In China, that can mean soft serve for around 30 cents, and in the United States, where it opened in Los Angeles and New York just days apart in December 2025, a cone runs about a dollar and fifteen cents.
They aren’t using those cardboard tasting cones either.
The drinks pull similar numbers, with the brand claiming its Kung Fu Lemonade alone sells a billion cups a year, a figure it credits to working directly with farms for its ingredients.
The other half of the Mixue story is its marketing.
The chain has turned its snowman mascot, the Snow King, into a full universe of merch, animated series, and catchy songs, and there is a good chance you have already met the frosty character somewhere on your feed.
Which brings it back to Diabetes Plaza.
Locals know that plaza as a brutal battleground, where dessert and drink shops open and close fast and the competition is fierce.
Mixue would be walking into that fight, but it would also be walking in with rock bottom prices and, just as importantly, almost no direct soft serve competition in the plaza.
That combination could let it own the ice cream lane while everyone else fights over bubble tea, and at a dollar a cone, dropping in becomes an easy yes.
If the rumour holds, Mixue would be the latest global Asian chain to plant a flag in Richmond as its first test in the country.
For more new and upcoming food spots in Metro Vancouver, take a peek at our tracker here, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
Address: Union Square Shopping Centre, Richmond BC