Chinese ice-cream brand, Mixue (蜜雪) has made an online splash by turning its receipts into pages of a serialised novel. Now when you buy an ice cream, you get a story too. The elements of the story link together to form a whole book of over 20 installments. The story in question is called Xue Wang Sells Coffee in Ancient Times (雪王在古代卖咖啡) – a time-slip caper starring Mixue’s snow-king mascot and sidekick Little Lemon running a cafe in a dynastic town.
- #蜜雪冰城小票藏连载小说# got 37.9 million views on Weibo
- #网友拼蜜雪小票看连载小说# got 2.63 million views on Weibo
The novel spread like wildfire across Weibo, where posts asking, ‘who has the next chapter?’ quickly snowballed, and comment sections brimmed with users attempting to stitch the story together from other people’s receipts.
The receipts doubled as a creative prompt. The finale printed on some slips ended with ‘the ending is up to you’, inviting consumers to write their own conclusions and effectively turning low-value paper into a co-creation canvas.
That interaction – fans swapping slips, trading screenshots, and proposing endings – helped push hashtags such as #Netizens piece together Mixue receipts to read a serialised novel (#网友拼蜜雪小票看连载小说#) and #Mixue receipts hide a serialised novel (#蜜雪冰城小票藏连载小说#) onto trending lists.
Mixue has now looped the stunt, printing the early chapters again so that latecomers can still read the full arc. Chapters have also been uploaded to its official Weibo for a one-sitting binge.
What Mixue have done is an excellent example of micro-media marketing, a method that’s proving increasingly effective in China. Crucially to all of this, Mixue has also threaded the story into its broader IP machine. At its core it’s about doing small, attention-grabbing stunts as opposed to broad sweeping campaigns.
The story’s tone and tropes mirror the brand’s short-drama playbook. Mixue has already produced a mascot-led animated series and is planning a micro-drama rollout on Douyin, Biliili and other platforms. The receipt stunt builds character recognition and drives hype for all this IP expansion, but most of all creates massive engagement – and all by turning their tills into a printing press.
