For most of us, that flimsy little paper receipt at the bottom of the bag is a nuisance. Something you crumple, lose, or refuse at the counter. One Chinese ice cream chain took a look at that receipt and thought to itself, “We’re going to make this into a hot commodity”.

Okay, they probably didn’t say that. But they may as well have.

A few months ago, Mixue started dripfeeding a serialized novel through its receipts (some TIL trivia: Mixue is the largest fast food franchise in the world). Each slip carried a tiny chapter of a story called Xue Wang Sells Coffee in Ancient Times (雪王在古代卖咖啡) featuring the chain’s mascots. Consumers would get the next chapter (20 in all) of the story when they bought another ice cream or drink. 

This idea turned out to be nothing short of genius. It was a massive hit. People started collecting the receipts and hunting for the chapters they’d missed. There were millions of views on Weibo, and comments sections filled with people trading screenshots and asking who had which chapter.  

Mixue pushed the interaction further. Some chapters ended with a line that said “the ending is up to you”, inviting people to write their own conclusions. At this point, the receipts stopped being just story fragments and turned into a co-creation prompt. Fans stitched together full narratives from scattered slips, while others invented parallel endings. 

And for those who were late to the party, Mixue just reprinted early chapters so they could still piece together the arc. For those who wanted to binge instead of collect, the brand even uploaded the chapters to its official Weibo.

This campaign wasn’t a one-off fluke. It is part of Mixue’s marketing strategy that focuses on small, attention-grabbing moments rather than massive cost-intensive campaigns. Part of this “micro” strategy is an animated series that’s already out as well as a microdrama in the works to be rolled out on Douyin (TikTok for the rest of the world), Bilibili, and other platforms.

And all of this was built on the smallest, most mundane touchpoint in the store, the humble receipt, which Mixue managed to turn into a high-engagement micro-media format. Other brands are now attempting to do the same. 

While Mixue’s receipt experiment feels wildly original (and credit where it’s due – it is), the broader concepts have been around forever: serialized storytelling with cliffhangers, giving people just enough of a dopamine hit that they come back for more. The only thing that’s really changed is the size of the episode and the platform it shows up on. 

So, Mixue’s receipt novel isn’t as much an outlier as a paper spin-off of a much bigger boom in micro storytelling that started in China: microdramas. 

Microdramas are basically vertical soap operas for the doomscroller. These are 2-3 minute episodes, shot specifically to be watched on phones, built around over-the-top emotions and ruthless cliffhangers. Vampire and werewolf romances, revenge on cheating exes, fantasy heiresses who fall in love with you and fix your family business. Some of these titles sound super corny and they are, but they are also highly addictive.

And they have exploded into a multi-billion dollar industry not just in China, but across many parts of the world. In 2025, the global microdrama industry is set to hit US$11 billion in global revenues, with 83% of revenue coming from China. In China, the industry has ballooned from US$500 million in 2021 to US$7 billion in 2024, and is projected to hit US$16.2 billion by 2030. This year, microdrama revenue is expected to surpass China’s local box office to reach US$9.4 billion.

More than 830 million viewers in China watch these microdramas, with nearly 60% of them paying for content or making transactions. One conversation I heard about this boom said that in the US, people are dishing out a few dollars at a time to get that next episode/dopa hit. It seems like tiny amounts, but they add up and can turn out to be significantly more costly than streaming subscriptions. Despite that, people are willing to pay.

This is the kind of repeat custom F&B brands only dream of. And this model is catching on and paying off everywhere where mobile phones exist. After all, what are Reels and Shorts, if not microdramas without the storyline and the cliffhangers and (sometimes) the money. 

Once you’ve binged a few of these, Mixue’s receipts snap into focus. This is the same brain at work.

Everyone loves to talk now about how attention spans are dead, as if humans suddenly forgot how to focus. But that’s not really what’s happening. 

Attention isn’t shrinking, it’s fragmenting. We’re just sharing it between more things, more of the time: phones, laptops, TVs, podcasts, notifications, and pretty much all of the pesky life things. 

In that environment, formats like microdramas and micro-campaigns don’t feel like a downgrade from “proper” content. They feel like the right size for the gaps people actually have: a couple of minutes while you’re in a queue, between commute stops, while dinner is in the microwave, or even in the bathroom at work when you want to shut the world out. You’re not going to start a 45-minute prestige series in that window, but you’ll happily watch a chaotic fantasy about vampires and lost heiresses in three bite-sized scenes.

This is where the structure of microdramas really shines. They respect the reality that your thumb is always half a second away from moving on. So they front-load the hook and simplify the setup to give you a satisfying emotional spike fast – with the promise of another just one episode away. 

Mixue’s receipt novel is doing the same thing in analogue form: small, self-contained story beats that can be enjoyed in a couple of minutes, but tempt you to come back for the next hit.

The other reason Mixue’s campaign really resonates is that it pulls the story back into the real world. When I talked this through with my colleague and marketing strategist Barbara Sexton, her reaction wasn’t “what a clever piece of content”, it was “what a clever way to re-architect an old-school touchpoint.”

Instead of fighting for attention inside the “horrible online fighting pits” (her words, not mine!) of social ads, Mixue starts somewhere nobody else is really competing: the physical receipt you’re already holding. They could have gone straight to QR codes and have a “scan to read our novel” situation, and most people would have ignored it. 

Printing the chapter directly onto paper makes the story unavoidable for a few moments. Only then does it spill back online, as people photograph, swap, and dissect the chapters on Weibo.

Barbara also pointed out that this isn’t some futuristic new trick. It’s marketing 101 – use what’s physically in front of your customer, but just re-engineer it for the times we live in. So, instead of a meager discount for next time in tiny print that no one will see, the receipt itself becomes the hero.

For food and drink brands, that’s the real lesson. Your most boring artifacts – receipts, lids, tray liners, sugar sachets – are all potential narrative surfaces. Mixue just reminded everyone that in a world obsessed with screens, sometimes the smallest, scrappiest physical touchpoint is the one people could care about most.

This is usually where someone says, “It’s all about micro-moments. You have to meet consumers where they are.” Which sounds wise and means fuck all. In practice, it usually translates to: be on every platform, react to every trend, and spray content everywhere.

The more I looked at Mixue and at microdramas, the more it felt like the opposite is true. The most interesting brands aren’t chasing micro-moments, they’re creating them. Mixue didn’t sit around waiting to intercept someone’s payment journey. It engineered a tiny moment of surprise and delight into the dead space that is the receipt and let that moment ripple outward. 

Microdrama platforms don’t “meet people where they are” either. They build intensely designed little stages and train audiences to visit them in the cracks of their day.

When I talked to Barbara about this, she was pretty blunt: endless talk about meeting consumers where they are is a great way to absolve brands of having ideas. It keeps the focus on channels and targeting instead of on crafting interactions people might actually care about. Mixue’s campaign works because it does the harder thing: it creates a new habit-sized moment – buy, read, repeat – until it feels natural.

For food and drink brands, that’s the more useful challenge. It’s not about figuring out how to hijack whatever micro-moment exists, but instead figuring out what tiny, repeatable moments to build into the way people already eat, drink, wait, commute, scroll.

There’s a bigger question lurking under all this format geekery: what job are these tiny stories actually doing for people? Because it’s not just filling fragmented attention.

We’re talking about people who are worried about money, burnt out at work, confronted with scary news, juggling personal responsibilities, and are often just… lonely. Of course a three-minute fantasy takes your mind off your problems. It’s a low-stakes bit of escapism that doesn’t require a ton of time or planning. 

And food and drink is unusually well placed to offer that kind of emotional relief, because they’re already woven into people’s rituals, whether it’s a social tea break during the day or that pick-me-up treat after a brutal day. They’re not going to fix structural loneliness or make housing affordable. But they do sit inside those small, everyday moments where people are looking for a lift.

Which brings us to an uncomfortable question: given that brands already own so many of these moments, do they use that position just to squeeze more transactions out of people, or to offer experiences that actually leave something behind that’s a bit more meaningful?

And for brands, that’s the bar. It’s not whether they can copy Mixue’s gimmick, but whether they can design small, repeatable moments that genuinely add a bit of meaning or excitement to someone’s day – and then, yeah, by all means, also sell them stuff.

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