Haikou ‘Union Cup’ Barista Skills Competition Kicks Off to Empower the Service Sector

At a Glance (China Coffee Network): On June 28, 2026, the “Union Cup” Barista Professional Skills Competition — part of the Haikou Vocational Skills Contest — officially kicked off in Haikou. Jointly organized by the Haikou Municipal Federation of Trade Unions and the Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, the event is a key practical platform for local trade unions to deepen the reform of the industrial worker workforce and implement skilled-talent cultivation.

On June 28, 2026, the “Union Cup” Barista Professional Skills Competition — part of the Haikou Vocational Skills Contest — officially kicked off in Haikou. Jointly organized by the Haikou Municipal Federation of Trade Unions and the Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, the event is a key practical platform for local trade unions to deepen the reform of the industrial worker workforce and implement skilled-talent cultivation.

Hainan’s coffee industry has deep roots. Relying on the century-old cultivation of Fushan and Xinglong and the inherited roasting craft of returned overseas Chinese, Haikou has seen sustained growth in coffee consumption formats and the premium tea-drinks sector. Baristas have become an indispensable new type of industrial worker within Haikou’s modern service industry. Guided by the theme “Build the Free Trade Port Through Merit, Realize Dreams Through Labor,” the competition adheres to the principles of training through competition, practicing through competition, and building through competition, aiming to discover leading industry talents, standardize professional techniques, and cultivate local high-skilled service professionals.

The event innovated its competition format, breaking away from the previous single-event format to set up an intensive, continuous schedule requiring contestants to complete two assessments — espresso-making and non-pressure brewing — within 10 minutes, comprehensively testing practitioners’ technical standards, temperature control, and operational rhythm. At the same time, the event is directly linked to vocational skill-level certification: the top three can be promoted to senior barista and the top fifteen to intermediate barista, truly achieving “compete to show skill, compete to earn rank, compete to grow.”

The venue brought together many skilled competitors, with young skilled workers who have long been rooted at the front lines of stores and deeply engaged in service roles competing on the same stage. Fu Chunlian, a contestant from Mushan Coffee, has four years of experience and holds an intermediate barista qualification. She told reporters that competing alongside top industry talent is both pressure and motivation; she hopes to refine her core techniques in pour-over and espresso-making through the event, accumulate R&D experience, and continuously improve her professional capabilities on the job.

Zeng Wenhhou, a young contestant with three years of experience who runs his own coffee studio, admitted that skills competitions are the best way to identify weaknesses and shore up shortcomings. The new continuous format is closer to real combat scenarios and can precisely expose deficiencies in operational details. “Exchanging and learning from peers, learning from each other’s strengths, the improvement in skills is very obvious. I hope to achieve skill-level promotion through this competition and keep refining my craft on the job.”

Moving forward, the Haikou Municipal Federation of Trade Unions will continue to focus on key occupations in the modern service sector, regularly organizing vocational skills competitions, on-post training, and skills training activities, continuously broadening the growth channels for industrial workers, and cultivating a team of high-quality, highly skilled service talents to provide solid skilled-talent support for the high-quality development of Haikou’s free trade port core leading zone. (Reporter Lai Shuwen, Worker’s Daily Client)