In the build up to our South African AeroPress Championship we were reminded of chatting with the wonderful Wendelien van Bunnik, the 2019 World AeroPress Champion and founder of The Happy Network originally published in Issue 50.
We all have something to learn from the experience of others. Wendelien van Bunnik is the 2019 World AeroPress Champion. In the same year she also competed at the World Barista Championships representing The Netherlands. Having competed since 2011, these incredible accomplishments, the pinnacle of her coffee career at that point, barrelled her down a new path. She is focused on making the journey of coffee professionals happier and more inclusive through her platform The Happy Coffee Network and from the competition stage, where she finds joy in supporting other competitors as an emcee, her trademark pink hair brightening up many a competition. We asked her to tell us her story, to inspire us to fail and as a reminder that each of you is amazing.
Words by Wendelien van Bunnik-Verver - The Happy Coffee Network
Never assume knowledge.
Last weekend, I took a course on mechanics for my motorbike, because no one ever taught me anything about mechanics. I felt like an utter idiot. 100% beginner. Very uncomfortable. This is such a relatable feeling though, and it's so easy to forget how that feels once you're in the industry or down the rabbit hole for a while. You forget the moment when you didn't know the difference between a washed coffee and a natural. It's very tempting to get a large ego. It's important to keep reminding yourself that you were a beginner once.
When I started in coffee, I saw the tip of the iceberg and I thought, that is a freaking cool tip. I want to know the whole iceberg. Today. Right now! I quickly found out the more you know, the less you know. And that can be quite daunting. The amount of gatekeeping that takes place, experts trying to keep the knowledge guarded, is also a reality. I have the luxury of being quite bold. In most cases, I won't be afraid to look stupid to ask a question. That has only come with experience. I love to feel the relief of the 10 other people around me that are, like, oh, thank god she's asking it. That empowers me. There's nothing shittier than being in a room where you feel like everyone seems to know what they're talking about, and you are the only one that has no idea. I just want to make sure that, on my watch, that happens as little as possible.
I find a lot of joy in learning an in knowing that whenever I find an answer, it's only the ‘truth’ for a certain amount of time until the next ‘truth’ comes along. For some reason, that makes me feel very calm, because it means I don't have to have all the answers. We don’t live in a world of absolutes. I like being able to grow without end.
I started out by working at ‘the’ cool place. The beginning of Specialty Coffee in Utrecht.
That's where all the hipster guys were working, beards, tattoos, all the cliches. All the guys. I thought I was pretty cool, because I secured a barista job there. I was doing my best to fit in, even though I didn't listen to the same music and I didn't have tattoos at the time. I was trying way too hard to fit in. I had all this enthusiasm. I liked coffee, and serving coffee, and learning about it, and then telling other people about how cool it was. But I had nowhere to go with all that energy, I felt people were preventing me from moving forward in my learning. Or I let other people prevent me from doing it, because I didn't want to look lame or stupid or silly.
That's been something that I have struggled with throughout my career.
Paradoxically, it was also this blissful phase where I thought I knew everything. And I had no idea that I knew absolutely nothing. The Dunning Kruger effect was in full force. This is the psychological principle of cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. And in the beginning of learning something new, you’re making your way to the peak of what it refers to as ‘Mount Stupid.’ I was on Mount Stupid for the first 3 to 4 years of my coffee career, maybe longer. That embarrassing stage, the cringey stage, where I was so freaking confident. Some people are stuck in this stage the rest of their life. Because they stop learning. Anyway, I moved on from Mount Stupid, because I started working in a roastery where I had a mentor who clearly explained to me that I knew nothing.
What follows is the moment when you realise you know nothing, The Valley of Despair. Yesterday, you thought you knew everything, and now you're in this phase of realising that you know absolutely nothing. You lose all your confidence and all you see is everything that you don't know. And so begins the long, slow, hopefully never-ending Slope of Enlightenment.
The roastery was my first full time job. I got to cup, production roast, but also, learn about green coffee. I got to travel to origin in 2015. I did most of the wholesale training. I got to share all the knowledge that I learned with with other people and I got to compete during my time there. I got all the support and time that I needed for that, which was amazing. But at the same time, I still felt like there was every time I asked a question, people around me were disappointed that I didn't know the answers. And I pushed so hard to try find the answers and keep being better, that I burnt out. I never stopped to look back at the progress that I had made. No one ever reminded me to just stop for a second. And instead of looking at everything that you don't know yet, let's take a look at how you started. And I think that is the key that I try to remind myself and others on a regular basis now, because I think that is the the the way to prevent that shitty feeling .
I kept this to myself, that struggle and that crippling self doubt for years. I struggled in, well, not in silence exactly, I complained to my boyfriend, now husband. But everything else was just internally.
And I noticed that after I left that company, during COVID mid burnout #2, I started realising if I started practicing being open about it a bit more and being vulnerable with people, maybe I’d feel better. And I have not had a single bad encounter or experience after sharing my insecurities.
In fact, what I noticed is that the more open I am, the more it seems to give other people a sense of relief and a sense of permission to feel those emotions.
In the end, it's such a waste of energy to struggle on your own, while I am convinced that at least 90% of people struggle in similar ways. And the more I start realising that, the more it kind of gives me some room to breathe as well. I can have I can be open about that there's days that I have no idea where I'm going, what I'm doing. Just take it one step at a time.
I try to practice speaking to myself the way I would speak to my friends. I like to think that being more vulnerable and open and authentic will, even though it's harder, even though you might get hurt more, even though people might like you less, in the long run, you will be healthier, and you will find the people that resonate with it.
Competition was an outlet for me to express myself and immerse myself fully in coffee, prove something to all the people around me who I felt, at the time, were holding me back.
Why do people train their whole lives to make it to the Olympics? Is it healthy? No. Do they have a a great social life? Amazing work life balance? Financial stability? No. Committing to coffee competitions is the same. We’re absolutely, 100% crazy.
I'd been competing in the Barista Champs for so long, when I finally made it to being crowned Dutch Champion, it was such a massive validation of my skill. I absolutely loved competing in the World Barista Championships. Even though that was completely overwhelming. It's a completely new level which I was not prepared for. I don't think anyone who competes for the first time is prepared for that.
As a competitor you turn into this crazy version of yourself. Not necessarily very pleasant to be around. I saw Anthony Douglas, Champion from 2022 post a video about this, “More hours of training didn’t necessarily mean better results.” I was definitely doing too much. I still thought that training more meant better. I was completely preoccupied for at least 5 to 6 months. We had a 2 year old daughter at the time. When I look back at the photos from that year, beginning of 2019, there are maybe 2 photos of my daughter, the rest were coffee pictures - table set up, table cloth, glasses, cards, whatever. Competition can come at such a high price.
Then it was over, and it was so strange, because I'd spent a year and a half, almost full time preparing. And then I came home, and then I fell into this huge pit after WBC. What happens now after the success? And it turns out that after that whole WBC rush, life just goes back to normal. A new competition season starts. That was a very strange experience. AeroPress came to town. I decided to join in, it’s a low key, accessible format, it was in my hometown. I could cycle there, have a beer, make some coffee, and go back home. I missed the rush of the stage. I was just going there to support my former colleagues and their event and have some fun. I never expected to take home that trophy and get to go to the World AeroPress Champs in London, much to the annoyance of my husband who was still trying to recover from the whole barista thing. He had literally said, we're never doing this again after WBC.
With AeroPress though, it was so different, because there was almost no preparation. I just went there to have a good time. Cool coffee people getting together, having a beer, having a laugh, pressing some coffee. After I won that competition, which I clearly did not see coming, I could never have expected the change and the impact that it would have on my career. That turned out to be my international breakthrough, which was nuts, because I think it was I was looking for that kind of breakthrough with Barista. I was not prepared at all for what happens when you win a World Coffee title. And this was only AeroPress. I remember that Aga (Agnieszka Rojewska, WBC 2018 Champion) reached out to me. She saved me from that roller coaster. My social media was exploding. I had no idea what was going on. And she texted me, and she told me to take a breath and wait for this first storm to pass and then take this opportunity to think of how you want to use it. And that was really, really helpful. I was ready to see where this breakthrough was gonna lead me, and then COVID started happening. By the time I got invited to my first trade show as World AeroPress Champion in Seoul, South Korea everything suddenly stopped. I was I was ready to take over the world. Riding the wave. But there was no wave.
I wanted to use all the opportunities that were coming my way and I wanted to help that benefit the company that I was working for. But we didn't see eye to eye about that. It completely caught me off guard, because I'd been working there for 10 years. I was incredibly loyal, and I was really thinking what is good for me is going to be good for the company. But they definitely didn't agree with me on how we could benefit from this World Title. I felt even more miserable, I had my big breakthrough that I've been working towards for 14 years. And then nothing.
I eventually left the the roastery in early 2020, because I was so miserable that I had to, even though I was very much concerned about financial security. People knew me as Wendelien from that roastery. I identified myself as that company, too. I had to reinvent myself, which is terrifying.
That's when I started making content online, just as a creative outlet, some funny videos. That started to reach people. I did manage to build a platform from my win. It was just online instead of in real life.
I was also naive. I thought I could make one video and then I can teach tons of people. I made an e-course with the help of Perfect Daily Grind. They reached out, they were building this whole education platform. They have a huge platform. I was so excited for it to sell like crazy. They had this whole marketing system behind it. And so I took my last €1600, hired a camera guy who was also good at editing to build an e-course on how to master your AeroPress, because after my win that's what I got asked about mostly. They put it on their education platform, and nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. I think the course sold once.
I needed a new plan.
I remember someone asking me: do you want to freelance? Or do you wanna build something?
An entrepreneur is someone who makes something new, who builds a company, which is different to freelancing, which is just hiring yourself out for services. But all I was thinking about at the time was, I need to make an income. What can I do? I can do training. I'm an AST and can run SCA courses. I can do events. My calendar was full pretty quickly. But there was still that niggling thought: I wanted to make something from scratch that wasn't there yet in the world. It was very easy for me to realise that I wanted to build a place for people that felt like I had felt for the first 14 years of my career. I wanted people to struggle less than I did. That’s where the idea of building a paid community, like a membership subscription business model, where I can include all these crazy creative ideas that I have, like the training and coffee subscription and, events, online events, offline events. I did a lot of research on building an online business. And I wanted to be scalable. I also want to stay flexible. I have a family. A husband who works irregular hours and a beautiful girl who needs me. It's kind of a playground because I'm doing everything myself, Because I do think that ‘Everything is Figureoutable’. That's a book that I read over the summer. I knew that I wanted to do it. I wanted to build an online business, but I had no technical skills at all. But I can read really fast. And I'm also not afraid to ask questions. It's definitely why it's also going very slow and still very far from perfect. But at least what I made is a 100% my own. And I’m figuring it out as I go. Now my AeroPress course is available to all my members, so it has found its place.
I'm very open and honest about these things. The failures. The not knowing how to do things. Everyone in the Happy Coffee Network has the same openness and also the same insecurities. The people that I attract are people that resonate with that culture. They’ll never be mean or condescending about someone asking a question or assume the knowledge. There’s so much of that energy I had at the beginning of my career, but wasn’t able to do anything with. For example, we have a pub quiz coming up organised by a community member. They are coming up with questions, marketing it, making it happen, because I don’t have the time! And all I have to do is use my resources to come up with an epic prize, for instance, that will attract people to the event, because I can use my contacts that I built, to say, like, hey, Morgan Eckroth (US Barista Champion, influencer of millions) can you hook me up with an Onyx Advent calendar as a prize? And the deal is done! That is something that other people cannot do, but I can. And there’s value in that. I think that's that's such a great I think that's a 100% what community is about. So it's not just me being he leader of the community, I highly benefit from the community myself as well. And the only reason that it works is because we are like minded people.
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It is a passion project. It would be nice if, at a certain point, I would have some sort of sustainable income from it. Because there’s building a community and then there's also trying to monetise community building. Otherwise, you just have another very expensive hobby. Until then, I still freelance on the side, training and helping with events.
I want the Happy Coffee Network to become the biggest impact maker in the coffee industry. For people looking for professional, but also personal growth. I think there are a lot of places where you can find coffee knowledge. Probably places where you can find better knowledge than in the Happy Coffee Network. I'm looking to provide a different point of view. What resources can I offer other than my own personal experience? I’m realising that that is a resource for other people. Bringing up the difficult questions so we can get to better answers together. That you’re not alone in your struggle. Because I love being people's cheerleader. I don't want be the James Hoffmann that tells you this is the best grinder because of the data. I like being people's fans and supporting them, rooting for them. It can be a much bigger world than just telling people this is the best way to the best cup of coffee. There's so much more out there.
Coffee happens to be the thing that connects us. It should be about more than money. The term Values Driven Company has been crossing my path more and more recently. I've been binge listening to the podcast, Map It Forward by Lee Safar. And she keeps repeating: It’s gonna take longer if you have a business that runs on values. So, I might be broke for a little while longer, but I sleep so well.
A lot of people get into the specialty coffee industry because they want to change things. To improve things for producers. And at a certain point, you get to the stage of how far are you willing to go for that? We all have a choice to make. I think we can all contribute a tiny bit. If you put all these people together that have contributed a tiny bit, then you can make a big wave. Now we are a 170 people in the Happy Coffee community: like minded, underdog, slightly insecure coffee people. I keep finding out every day that there's so many more of us. We we are in the majority. I just try to bring them together, make them feel at home, make them feel good about themselves, spark some conversations and protect the culture. And I know that we can have such a massive impact as a group.
