Xiaomi has turned its cafeteria into a product lab again, and this time the payoff is edible: a new Xiaomi ice cream sold in Standard, Pro, and Max versions. The pricing is pure Xiaomi too, with the base cup at 5.99 yuan, a cookie-topped Pro at 6.99 yuan, and a Max version at 8.99 yuan with three cookies.
The joke is obvious, but the branding exercise is not. Xiaomi has spent years making its name synonymous with tiered product lineups, and now that logic has reached dessert. That kind of internal branding stunt is cheap marketing with a better PR payoff than yet another gadget launch no one asked for.
Xiaomi ice cream pricing and versions
- Standard: 5.99 yuan
- Pro: 6.99 yuan, with a cookie topping
- Max: 8.99 yuan, with three cookies
How Xiaomi made the ice cream
Chef Bing Jiabao from Xiaomi’s cafeteria developed the recipe after experimenting with millet, one of Xiaomi’s signature ingredients in the company story. Xiaomi says Bing took inspiration from tofu ice cream and refined the process through three iterations. The result starts with steamed millet, moves into a paste blended with milk, and ends with millet grains on top.
That’s more interesting than it sounds. Food brands do this kind of experimentation all the time, but a consumer-tech company doing it inside its own cafeteria feels like a very Xiaomi version of vertical integration. Photos of the machine also showed Mengniu branding, hinting that the dairy side of the operation was not exactly a solo effort.
Why the launch caught on so fast
The Xiaomi ice cream trended immediately on social media, which is hardly shocking: people love a brand doing something weird, especially when the naming scheme looks like a product roadmap. Some commenters even mocked the absence of an Ultra model or suggested a Youth Edition, and honestly, that’s the most natural consumer response Xiaomi could have hoped for.
Xiaomi said the ice cream sold out quickly after launch. The company has run its cafeteria in-house since 2015, with chefs and staff hired as direct employees who receive standard company benefits, so this is less a one-off gag than another example of how far Xiaomi likes to push its brand into everyday life. The real question now is whether this becomes a recurring novelty or just a very successful sugar rush.