When Simon Sun was a child, his dog disappeared. It had lived with his family for four or five years, long enough for Simon to become deeply attached to it. What stayed with him was not only the loss, but the fact that he never knew what happened. If the dog had died, he thought, perhaps the story would have ended there. Instead, whenever he saw a stray dog on the street, there was always that little possibility: Could that be mine? Sometimes relatives would even tell him they thought they had seen it somewhere. There was never an answer, and perhaps that explains something about Simon better than any championship title ever could. “I think I like things to have a result,” he told us. “I can’t stand a process without a result.”
Simon still carries that instinct today. Conversations should eventually reach a conclusion. Projects should lead somewhere. As his company has grown and his time has become more limited, he has become increasingly willing to say no to things that create nothing meaningful. “Being busy without any result makes you very tired,” he said. “And it feels a little meaningless.” It is an interesting way to understand someone who has spent almost a decade competing, won China’s Barista Championship three times, and finished second on the World Barista Championship stage. Simon has achieved results most baristas will never experience. But the particular result he began chasing years ago still feels unfinished.
Coffee was not Simon’s first career. He was already 27 when he entered the industry. Before that, he worked in magazines, media and entertainment promotion, a world that initially felt exciting. He met celebrities he had previously only seen on television and sometimes found himself walking beside them, surrounded by the attention that came with their fame. Simon does not pretend that part of the attraction was anything more profound. “Every stage of life has a different kind of vanity,” he said. When he was younger, that world felt cool. But eventually the novelty disappeared. The work became familiar, the excitement faded, and he could no longer clearly answer what he was actually trying to achieve by staying in it.
After returning for a period to Zhengzhou, Henan, where his family is from, Simon encountered coffee and began teaching himself latte art. Then he watched the 2013 World Barista Championship. “I thought, wow, this competition is really cool.” He liked coffee, he liked what he saw on that stage, and suddenly there was something worth pursuing. He returned to Beijing and started trying to understand specialty coffee seriously. The difficult part was that Simon was naturally quite introverted and knew almost nobody in the industry. So he forced himself to become someone more social. He describes those early days as “硬聊、硬贴、硬熟悉” — forcing himself into conversations, putting himself around people and finding ways to get to know them. “It really dug out a side of me that even I didn’t know existed.”
One of those relationships began with Simon repeatedly showing up at the studio of Tan Guoqing, known as Blue. Simon describes it jokingly as “硬蹭” — stubbornly hanging around. He went there again and again, perhaps often enough that Tan eventually became too embarrassed to tell him not to come back. When they tested coffees, Simon joined. When there was work to do, he helped. He listened, asked questions and gradually became part of the group. Simon credits Tan as one of the people who helped him go “from a nobody to a real barista,” while other mentors and friends later helped him understand competition. Simon believes his own effort mattered, but he is equally willing to acknowledge luck: at important moments, he met good people. His contribution was making sure he stayed around long enough to learn from them.
By 2017, Simon had begun competing seriously, but his goal was already much bigger than his experience. When friends asked what he wanted from competition, his answer was World Champion. “People probably thought I was just bragging,” he remembers. “But in my heart, that was really what I thought.” His reasoning is characteristically straightforward: “If I’m going to compete, and I don’t want to become the best one, why am I competing?” In 2019, he became Chinese Barista Champion. More national titles followed until he had won three of the four national finals he entered. Then, in 2025, Simon finished second at the World Barista Championship in Milan.
For someone who needs things to have a result, we had to ask: Was second place a result? Simon did not hesitate. “Second place isn’t the result I’m pursuing in life, but for that stage, it was a result.” It may be one of the simplest ways to understand his relationship with competition. He does not need to diminish second place simply because it was not first. That moment mattered enough that when he returned from Milan, he tattooed the trophy on his arm. It became part of a collection that already tells much of his life: an early Espresso Parts logo from the days when he was falling in love with coffee; “The devil is in the details,” reflecting his obsession with doing things properly; Superman, representing his belief that when a problem appears, you solve it; and tattoos representing his wife and daughter. His body has gradually become a record of different stages of his life. The World Championship trophy belongs there too. It marks a result, just not the final one.
Yet one of the more interesting changes in Simon has happened away from competition. The person who wants clear results has had to learn that building a company requires surrendering some control. Only a few years ago, Simon could still spend half a day personally roasting production coffee before dealing with company matters and finding time for competition. As the business grew, that became impossible. Departments formed, responsibilities were handed to other people, and Simon began concentrating more of his attention on brand direction, internal collaboration, coffee selection and quality control. For someone who cares deeply about details, delegation has not always come naturally.
Sometimes Simon can already see that a colleague is about to make a mistake. He may even imagine what the outcome will look like ten steps later. But he is learning not to intervene every time. “I might know that what they do isn’t going to be perfect, but I still give it to them.” If he always steps in and fixes the problem himself, the person never learns and the company remains dependent on him. It is an interesting contradiction in Simon’s evolution: the younger version of him wanted to find the right result himself; the older Simon is learning that sometimes you have to allow someone else to reach the wrong result before they can grow.
That change has come with mistakes of his own. Simon speaks openly about choosing the wrong people for important roles and having to face the consequences. Earlier in his entrepreneurial life, problems could consume him. He would repeatedly think about what had gone wrong and fight with himself over it. Today, his attitude is different. “No problems — that would be the problem.” When you fall into a hole, you find a way back out. If one solution does not work, find another. Even if the company itself someday failed, Simon believes he could accept it, start again or try another industry. What has changed is not his desire for a result, but his acceptance that the road toward one will never be as controllable as he once imagined.
Perhaps that is also why Simon speaks so matter-of-factly about loneliness. “A person leading something will definitely be lonely. That’s normal.” When other people can carry something, he says, you carry it too. When they can no longer carry it, you still have to. But he does not believe loneliness should become isolation. Some worries may need to stay inside, while the good things — happiness, recognition and the rewards of the work — should be shared. His family has made that easier. During competition and major projects, fifteen- or sixteen-hour working days can become normal, and Simon knows his wife, daughter and parents absorb part of that cost. He speaks with particular gratitude about their understanding, including times when his father was unwell but told Simon not to interrupt his work simply to come and see him. Behind the individual standing on the competition stage is a family quietly making space for him to be there.
After more than a decade in specialty coffee, Simon has also become less interested in treating every cup as a battle. He still cares intensely about quality, but he worries that coffee can become unnecessarily adversarial when consumers, brands and professionals turn every preference into something that must be praised or attacked. “Coffee is something that makes people happy,” he said. “It’s something that adds a little more beauty to life.” For him, it can be approached like tennis, cycling, fishing or any other interest that makes life richer. Care about it, learn about it and ask the industry to improve, but perhaps we do not always need to fight ourselves — or each other — over what is in the cup.
That thinking also shapes what Simon hopes to see from Chinese coffee as he becomes more visible internationally. He does not claim to represent China, but he understands that when a Chinese competitor stands on the world stage, people inevitably attach a place to the person. When we asked what he hoped international coffee professionals might eventually associate with China, his answer was simple: “Creativity and independence.” China’s enormous and rapidly developing coffee market gives professionals countless opportunities to roast, brew, sell, make mistakes and learn from them. Simon wants that experience to eventually produce something beyond catching up. Chinese coffee should respect and learn from the rest of the world, he believes, but it should also develop ideas, products and methods that make the rest of the world curious about what is happening here. Not copying. Not proving superiority. Simply reaching a point where knowledge and curiosity can move in both directions.
Simon turns forty this year, and 2027 will mark roughly ten years since he began seriously competing in the Barista Championship. He often tells younger competitors to think like athletes: the time and energy you can dedicate to competition are limited, and at some point another stage of life needs those resources. For Simon, ten years feels like a meaningful chapter. The goal has not changed — World Champion — but he is already thinking about what happens after the competition chapter eventually closes. Perhaps the next result will be commercial. Perhaps he will find another competition. Or perhaps it will have very little to do with coffee.
Then Simon tells us something unexpected. Around the age of fifty, he would like to try becoming a Michelin chef. He loves food, is fascinated by Western cooking and likes the possibilities of combining Chinese and Western approaches. One day, he can imagine becoming a beginner again: learning another craft, entering another unfamiliar world and finding out how good he can become at it. It sounds ambitious, but in 2013, a 27-year-old former media worker watched the World Barista Championship and decided that one day he wanted to become World Champion. That probably sounded ambitious too.
Simon Sun has spent almost ten years trying to finish that sentence. Maybe he will. Maybe the ending will look different from the one he imagined. But every time Simon reaches one result, another question seems to appear. Media ended and coffee began. Coffee led to competition. A Chinese championship led to the world stage. Second place became a tattoo, but not a full stop. One day, competition itself will end, and perhaps there will be a restaurant, a kitchen or something he has not imagined yet. For a man who hates unfinished things, Simon Sun has somehow built a life full of new beginnings.
