Zhong Xuegao is resurrected, has the “old score” been overturned?

“Core Tips”

Zhong Xuegao is on sale in winter, what are you trying?

作者 | 詹方歌

編輯 | 邢昀

After the resurrection, Zhong Xuegao started selling again.

Li Jin was one of the first consumers to receive the ice cream. She placed the order on November 3 and the ice cream was delivered early on the 4th. “The taste is different (after resurrection). The semi-artful chocolate has become more mellow,” she said. However, some consumers who received the new Zhong Xue Gao on social media said that the calories marked on the packaging were different from before. It used to be more than 900 calories, but now it is more than 1,000 calories. The texture also tastes thicker, “like too much starch”.

Zhong Xuegao is almost the only ice cream brand that Li Jin has repeatedly repurchased from 2020 to 2023 and is eating. After the brand fell into negative publicity about food safety, she stopped eating ice cream because she hated the wooden sticks that were common on the market.

This time, Zhong Xuegao’s iconic tile ice cream is back on the shelves, but it’s no longer the same operating team behind it. Since 2023, Zhong Xuegao has been in trouble due to huge debts. In 2025, he was applied for bankruptcy liquidation, and the brand trademark was also auctioned by the entire judicial auction in May 2026.

The once controversial representative of a new consumer brand now has a new owner. Whether the familiar taste can be exchanged for a second chance is the first question the new team has to answer after taking over the brand.

1、回歸

Li Jin discovered that the packaging of Zhong Xuegao after his return was different from before. It used to be paper boxes and foam boxes with good quality, but now the paper boxes have been replaced by plastic bags. The popsicle sticks are also different from before they were discontinued. “The thickness of the popsicle sticks that arrived today is the same as at the beginning. In the second half of 2022, there will be several boxes that are thin.” She kept a lot of Zhong Xuegao’s popsicle sticks and commented on the pictures for the official account.

The reason why such a subtle difference can be noticed is because Li Jin is a “super fan” of Zhong Xuegao. From 2020 to 2022, she placed about 50 orders on Taobao, JD.com, Pinduoduo and other channels, spending more than 9,000 yuan. Li Jin commented that he would not treat anyone badly when it comes to food. She remembered that Zhong Xue Gao was indeed the most expensive popsicle in offline cold drink wholesale stores at that time.

This time Zhong Xuegao is back on sale, and the first batch only has three classic flavors: light milk, velvet cocoa, and semi-semi-smooth chocolate. Li Jin specially left a message to the official customer service of the JD store, hoping that her favorite Irish aged cheese will one day return. “It’s different (from other cheese-flavored ice cream). It’s so delicious. The milk cap of Lele Tea is a bit similar to the same style.” Li Jin recalled.

Even after the brand was discontinued for more than a year, old customers still miss its specific taste, which shows that Zhong Xuegao was successful in business back then. It has turned ice cream into a social topic, continues to develop high-end characters, and has high-profile marketing. However, marketing can succeed and marketing can fail. While promoting the brand, this approach also lays hidden dangers for the collapse of word-of-mouth in the future.

In 2019, the company was punished twice by the Shanghai market supervision department for false propaganda: the light milk ice cream claimed to be “without a drop of water”, but the actual ingredients contained drinking water; the stuffed red grape ice cream claimed to use “special grade red grapes”, but it was actually first-grade red raisins in bulk. The promotion of “baby grade standard” on the relevant sticks was also inconsistent with the facts. The two penalties were 3,000 yuan and 6,000 yuan respectively.

In June 2021, founder Lin Sheng said in an interview that “the cost of 66 yuan ice cream is about 40 yuan”, which triggered heated discussions. Subsequently, the two old tickets were dug out again, and Zhong Xuegao publicly apologized. In the summer of 2022, the video of “Sea Salt Coconut” ice cream not melting at room temperature for a long time, and being accused of “burning but not melting” once again aroused public opinion. Added to the previous controversy over the high price of “Ice Cream Assassin”, consumers’ trust in product quality and pricing was pushed to the bottom.

Li Jin accidentally experienced the same situation. When her son was not paying attention, he hid a piece of sea salt coconut coconut under the desk. It was only after a long time that she discovered that the ice cream had grown hair but did not melt. “I didn’t buy that model again after that,” Li Jin said.

As for the ice cream not melting, Zhong Xuegao’s explanation at the time was that the main ingredients in the sea salt and coconut formula involved were milk, cream, condensed milk, whole milk powder, etc. The solid content of the product itself reached about 40%, so it melted slowly and was in a viscous form after it melted rather than turning into water. As for the thickener carrageenan, it is a compliant additive. Each 78-gram product contains about 0.032 grams, which also complies with the national standard.

In any case, the huge controversy caused by “burning without melting” in 2022 began to cause Zhong Xuegao’s business to stall rapidly, and ice cream sales also began to suffer.

It is reported that Zhong Xuegao’s products mainly rely on OEM, and the brand has invested heavily in channels. Previous media reports stated that in the past two or three years, Zhong Xuegao has launched about 400,000 terminal freezers and hundreds of thousands of special freezers in more than 200 cities. He has a sales team of thousands of people and hundreds of dealers. The offline market share once reached 60-70%, but it has been difficult to make profits for a long time.

With sales collapsing and huge investment, Zhong Xuegao’s cash flow quickly became tight. Old shareholders withdrew their capital, financing was cut off, and lease cancellations, layoffs, and wage arrears followed one after another.

In 2024, the company was subject to compulsory execution and its equity was frozen, and Lin Sheng became the person subject to execution and had to live stream goods to repay the debt; by 2025, the company was applied for bankruptcy and liquidation; until May 2026, the brand trademark was auctioned by the entire judicial auction.

2. The Ice Cream Assassin is back?

After the brand trademark was auctioned, Lin Sheng, the founder of Zhongxuegao, once stated that he did not know who bought the Zhongxuegao trademark and only hoped that the person who took over would treat the brand well.

In September 2026, the new Zhong Xuegao team announced at the China Ice Cream Industry Expo that the brand would return. The recommended retail prices of the first three products were set at 6.9 yuan to 7.9 yuan, which was significantly lower than the previous approximately 18 yuan. After nearly two months, the brand officially re-launched on JD.com on November 3, but the price of the return is higher than when it was officially announced.

It is reported that the actual price of the 4-pack of Zhong Xuegao Jingdong flagship store is about 11.5 to 13.2 yuan per bottle, which is much higher than the 6.9 and 7.9 yuan previously advertised, and is close to the range of 13 to 16 yuan that year. Only the price of 59.9 yuan for the 8-pack of mixed flavors is close to the official price.

On social platforms, the saying “The Ice Cream Assassin is back” also appeared again. The brand said that as it coincides with JD.com’s Double 11, the store also has more limited-time offers and activities available. In other words, it has not relaxed on the sales price, and may still hope to take the high-end route.

Currently, Zhong Xuegao is still forming a new team.

Judging from the recruitment information, Zhong Xuegao’s new entity “Changsha Zhong Xuegao Food” has separate layouts in research and development, content, and production: ice cream R&D engineer, with a monthly salary of 15 to 25K; short video content editor and new media content planner, with a monthly salary of 12 to 20K. These positions are all located in Changsha, concentrated in the Lushan Road area of ​​Yuelu District.

For production positions such as ice cream production supervisor and production team leader, the recruitment page directly states that the work address is Jiangsu Meilun Food Co., Ltd., and the responsibility is to be assigned to this factory for on-site management of the production line, and requires long-term overseas employment. Jiangsu Meilun was one of the old foundries before Zhong Xuegao changed hands.

Public information shows that Changsha Zhong Xuegao Food is 60% owned by natural person Wang Yaqing, and Changsha Hujia Food Technology, the parent company of Changsha quick-frozen brand Royal Tiger, holds 40%. Previously, Royal Tiger stated that the company was only a financial investment. It is worth noting that the daily operations of Zhong Xue High-tech Entity have been handed over to the new CEO Chen Dacheng, a food safety evaluation blogger born in the 1990s with nearly one million fans. His signature content is to dismantle ingredient lists and test food quality.

Letting a blogger who started out by skimming ingredient lists and raising food safety issues take charge of a brand that has been questioned for its pricing and food safety may be the first step for Zhong Xuegao to change his brand image.

3. Test the waters in winter and take the exam in summer?

According to the brand itself, the launch of Zhong Xue Gao’s resurrection selection in early winter is an initiative to test the waters. It is hoped that the products will be exposed to consumers earlier and listen to and collect more market feedback before the peak season arrives.

At the same time, more sales channels are still being established: officials said that in addition to JD.com, other platforms are gradually approaching and opening stores. On social platforms, we can already see individual dealers starting to promote it, but the number is still very small, and offline and multi-platform rollout is far from taking shape.

In other words, the current return is more like a small-scale cold start than a full-scale return to the market. The real test will have to wait until next summer’s peak season.

Testing the waters, Zhong Xuegao faced a lot of challenges.

The first is the issue of trust. The price signals released by the new team are inconsistent. The gap between the promotional price and the transaction price happens to fall on the old label of “Ice Cream Assassin”, which is equivalent to using the most sensitive topic to reawaken the negative impression of consumers. Consumers’ concerns about food safety issues can be overcome by the endorsement of the new CEO. Whether the Ice Cream Assassin label is a blessing or a curse for Zhong Xuegao remains to be tested by the market.

If Zhong Xuegao’s success back then was partly due to people’s pursuit of new consumer brands and the narrative of consumption upgrades, the current cold drink market is already different from the past.

At present, the cold drink market is in a stage of superposition of structural contraction and price system restructuring. The scale is falling, the price is bottoming out, and the high-end trend is receding. The three are happening at the same time, forming the fundamentals that Zhong Xuegao will face when he comes back.

According to the monitoring of the retail data platform Maoying, the sales of ice cream/ice cream in the peak summer season of 2026 will decline by double digits year-on-year, falling by nearly a quarter compared with 2023, but the average price per hundred grams has bottomed out at around 3.28 yuan. In terms of price band, the low-end market below 3 yuan shrank by more than 18%, while the mid-to-high-end market above 6 yuan was relatively resilient.

With weak demand and consumption becoming more rational, it is still unknown whether Zhong Xuegao’s return can be converted into sustained sales.

At present, the major brands in the domestic high-end ice cream market are not having a good time either. According to data from the Instant Win platform, the current top players in the price band above 10 yuan are mainly Magnum, Nestlé, Mars, and Sanyuan with the exogenous brand Baxi as the core. For example, Menglong’s financial report shows that Chinese companies performed poorly in the second quarter. Nestlé Global is currently planning to sell off its remaining ice cream business and will only rely on its snack IP Crunchy Shark to test the waters in wafer ice cream in China.

For Zhong Xuegao, what is more difficult than cutting prices is re-proving itself in a market that is very different from the brand’s peak. After all, there are only a few old fans like Li Jin who are willing to place an order immediately. Whether more consumers will pay for this familiar and unfamiliar name still depends on the team strategy after the resurrection and the product itself.