Shu Yi Burnt Fairy Grass "Year of Substance" Once Again Scores a Win: Fresh Orange Series Sales Break 1.6 Million

Spring is in the air, and with it, the domestic new tea drink market has entered a concentrated explosion period for new spring products. Major brands are seizing the opportunity of spring consumption, launching seasonal tea drink products that emphasize freshness, in an attempt to gain an advantage in the fierce market competition. Recently, after launching two new products in the “Spring Orange” series, Shuyi Burnt Grass has once again introduced the “Crispy Orange Hand-Pressed” at its nationwide stores, featuring freshly cut seasonal spring oranges in the tea. In just three days, 400,000 cups were sold.

Recently, Shuyi Burnt Grass launched the “Crispy Orange Hand-Pressed.” Company provided image.

This is not the first time Shuyi has delivered impressive results in the seasonal fresh fruit segment. Looking back at last winter, Shuyi launched the “Fresh Strawberry Season” limited series, which, thanks to the fresh and plump highland strawberries, a rich variety of toppings, and a refreshing taste, continued to sell well throughout the winter, selling a total of 12.3 million cups of fresh strawberry drinks over three months, becoming a phenomenal product in the winter tea drink market. This spring, Shuyi has launched the “Fresh Orange Season,” deeply integrating the seasonal fresh orange elements with the brand’s core “ingredient-rich” gene, with multiple fresh orange new products working together, achieving over 1.6 million cups sold in just 15 days. This not only confirms Shuyi’s innovative strength in the fresh fruit tea drink field but also highlights the strong market appeal of its “fresh fruit + ingredient-rich” product strategy.

The consistent market actions have not only formed a clear product rhythm but also marked Shuyi’s official establishment of this year as the “Year of Ingredients.” As a result, the brand strategy has been clearly defined: enhance product quality and price ratio, and continue product iteration around “micro-innovation of ingredient-rich milk tea”—integrating seasonal fresh fruit, optimizing topping combinations, and creating exclusive toppings, returning to value creation while maintaining unique advantages in its products.

The secret to Shuyi’s breakthrough through product innovation lies here.

With the slogan “Half a cup is all ingredients,” Shuyi Burnt Grass has become popular across the country. Now, the domestic new tea drink industry has officially bid farewell to years of double-digit high growth and has entered a “new normal” of systematically slowing growth. While the market size continues to expand, the competitive logic has completely shifted from “scale first” to “efficiency first.” Fine-tuning the existing market has become the key to brand survival and development, and major brands have fallen into the dilemma of homogenized competition, where product innovation has become the core key to breaking the deadlock.

In the context of slowing growth in the domestic new tea drink market, Shuyi Burnt Grass continues to rely on the “Burnt Grass” flagship product to achieve steady brand progress. A relevant person in charge at Shuyi recently stated that from 2021 to the present, the total sales volume of the Burnt Grass series has reached 700 million cups, with the highest sales in one year reaching 200 million cups. Among them, the membership repurchase rate through the mini-program is 22%, and the takeaway repurchase rate is 18%. This data indicates that ingredient-rich milk tea still possesses strong vitality. As the king of ingredients, Shuyi will remain firmly at the table.

Although Burnt Grass is Shuyi’s star product, industry experts believe that solely relying on this flagship product to enter the future new tea drink market will not solve the issue of brand value. The “flagship product dependency” carries multiple potential risks from the market, consumers, and competitors. It is essential to have breakthroughs in the product matrix to create brand loyalty.

Based on this understanding, Shuyi has initiated an upgrade iteration of its product strategy starting in 2025, officially putting the development plan for fruit milk, fruit milk green, and other light fruit tea on the agenda, embarking on a strategic transformation. The aim is to provide consumers with more choices beyond Burnt Grass, achieving a brand recognition transformation of “Shuyi Burnt Grass, not just Burnt Grass.” Subsequently, the brand launched the Wild Fresh Fruit Milk series, the Bayberry Fresh Fruit series, the Guava Fresh Fruit series, as well as new fruit milk green products including grape, strawberry, and big orange, deeply integrating popular fresh fruit elements with Shuyi’s core “ingredient-rich” gene. This further achieves an upgraded emotional experience of “ingredient-rich and interesting,” allowing each cup of tea to not only satisfy taste buds but also convey the freshness and healing of spring.

A series of impressive sales figures serves as the best evidence of the success of Shuyi’s product strategy transformation. Official data shows that after the launch of the Wild Fresh Fruit Milk series in March 2025, a total of 1.4 million cups were sold, gaining widespread recognition from consumers due to its refreshing taste and rich ingredients; the new Guava product sold nearly 200,000 cups on its first day, becoming a hit product in the tea drink market at that time; since its launch in September, the fruit milk green series, with its innovative combination of “fresh fruit + toppings + milk green,” has rapidly surpassed 10 million cups in cumulative sales, with the strawberry pudding milk green selling 3.25 million cups within 30 days, ranking high on the sales list; the fresh strawberry series of drinks sold 3 million cups in 30 days, second only to the core flagship Burnt Grass series. Through these impressive sales figures, it is evident that this 18-year-old tea drink veteran is attempting to redefine its ambition as the “King of Ingredients” in the new cycle with “fresh fruit + ingredient-rich.”

What makes the extreme cost-performance ratio achievable?

To retain the original flavor and rich aroma of seasonal fresh oranges as much as possible, the newly launched “Crispy Orange Hand-Pressed” and other fresh orange series products strictly adhere to the principle of “freshly cut, freshly pressed, freshly made,” with store staff manually cutting fresh oranges on-site, ensuring that each cup of drink contains at least 6 to 7 slices of fresh orange flesh, guaranteeing that every sip captures the fresh sweetness and bursting juice of the orange. At the same time, the product is paired with Shuyi’s exclusive crispy toppings, which enhance the satisfying feeling of “chewing while drinking” on the basis of a refreshing and sweet flavor, perfectly aligning with Shuyi’s core gene of “ingredient-rich” while meeting consumer demand for rich flavors.

A relevant person in charge at Shuyi stated that since the return of the Orange Series last year, Shuyi has established partnerships with several high-quality fresh orange producing areas in China to ensure the quality of fresh fruit in stores with solid supply chain capabilities. This spring’s new products in the fresh orange season all use navel oranges produced in Fengjie and Zigui. This production area, located near the mountainous area by the Yangtze River, has unique natural conditions that allow its navel oranges to be rich in aroma and sweet juice. Fengjie is known as the “first county for navel oranges in the country,” and its navel oranges are characterized by a unique flavor of “80% sweetness and 20% sourness,” aiming to provide consumers with the first taste of sweet and sour in spring. Since the launch of the Orange Series new products in early March, Shuyi’s nationwide stores have consumed over 250,000 jin (approximately 125,000 kg) of fresh oranges.

In March of this year, Shuyi Burnt Grass launched its spring limited Orange Camellia new product. Company provided image.

In the new tea drink market, Shuyi Burnt Grass has consistently won consumer favor with its practical brand image of “real materials.” Its dual advantages of pricing system and quality assurance are particularly prominent. Shuyi also clearly stated during its 18th anniversary media event that high quality and price ratio is still in Shuyi’s genes, “this will not be lost.” In the future, focusing on product value, Shuyi will increase innovation investment in ingredient-rich products using the strategy of “reassuring, delicious, and healthy,” while still reflecting extreme cost performance, which poses a significant challenge to Shuyi’s supply chain.

After years of deep cultivation in the supply chain, Shuyi Burnt Grass continues to promote cooperative planting bases, standardized processing, and cold chain transportation traceability throughout the process to ensure that every cup of drink is traceable, of quality, and cost-controlled. In March 2025, Shuyi Burnt Grass disclosed at a media exchange meeting that it has established six major cooperative planting bases, 29 multi-temperature integrated warehouses, nine fruit warehouses, and over 200 dedicated cold chain routes, completing the national fresh fruit supply chain layout ahead of schedule and forming a traceable closed-loop management system from planting to processing to logistics. Through its self-built nationwide cold chain network, Shuyi not only ensures the freshness and safety of its products but also achieves stable supply to lower-tier markets and even remote stores through an efficient logistics network, reducing logistics costs by 20%. This may also be the answer to why Shuyi continues to emphasize “fresh fruit + ingredient-rich,” loudly advocating cost performance.

Starting from a 6-square-meter store at the back gate of Sichuan Normal University, Shuyi Burnt Grass has now developed into a well-known tea drink brand with nearly 6,000 stores worldwide. The brand has shifted from “opening many stores” to “opening good stores,” implementing differentiated layouts targeting campuses, scenic areas, and transportation hubs, while deeply cultivating lower-tier markets like Sichuan and Hunan, with a coverage rate exceeding 90% in counties and districts. In overseas markets, Shuyi has focused strategically on Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand, having established stores in nine countries. From “half a cup is all ingredients” to “ingredient-rich and interesting,” and from Burnt Grass to fresh strawberries and fresh orange season, industry insiders believe that from the precise positioning of classic ingredient-rich milk tea to the attempt to create a new category miracle of fruit ingredient-rich milk tea, Shuyi Burnt Grass has completed two “ingredient revolutions,” which may likely give rise to more delicious and interesting product forms, bringing more imaginative space for the development of new tea drink enterprises in the second half of the game.

Written by Wang Ziyang

Edited by Tang Zheng

Proofread by Mu Xiangtong