Mixue Ice Cream & Tea, the Chinese fast-food restaurant chain specializing in ice cream and tea-based drinks, has taken a space on Canal and Broadway. Thanks to J. for the heads up, who sent this story from Time Out, which called Mixue “the Chinese juggernaut with more than 45,000 outlets worldwide.” And there’s this story in Fortune, which explains how it all happened.

It was founded in 1997 in Zhengzhou by Zhang Hongchao — the menu features soft-serve ice cream and milk tea. The company is public as of this past March, and franchised, though the parent company supplies ingredients, equipment and packaging to franchisees. The logo is a little smiling snow man, dubbed the “Snow King.”

The story from Wikipedia goes like this: “In June 1997, Zhang Hongchao was studying at Henan University of Economics and Law when he opened a shaved‑ice stall in Zhengzhou using a 3,000‑yuan loan from his grandmother. The stall’s early success convinced him to expand, and in 1999 he opened a second stand called Mixue Bingcheng.” But several stalls after that failed, until he opened Mixue Ice Cream & Tea in 2003, and “around 2005 the company introduced soft serve ice cream at the price of just 1 yuan, which quickly became a best-seller and its first signature product. By 2023, Mixue had sold approximately 442 million ice cream cones in China.”

The first store outside of China was opened in 2018 in Hanoi, Vietnam.