NBA star Jimmy Butler launches Bigface coffee brand

It started off as a joke, but now National Basketball Association star Jimmy Butler has officially launched a coffee brand.

The 32-year-old Miami Heat star started his business in the 2020 NBA Covid bubble in Orlando, Florida, selling cups of coffee for $ 20 each. After this season, Butler registered trademarks around Bigface and officially began planning for the launch of his coffee company. And on Friday, he announced that he has joined Shopify’s Creators Program to boost his Bigface coffee brand.

In an interview with CNBC, Butler admitted he wasn’t aiming to be “the best at making coffee,” but added that he took the business seriously.

“I wake up in the morning excited to work out and go to workout,” said Butler. “Then I want to hurry up and go home so I can do my bartending job,” he said, referring to making coffee drinks. For now, it will be selling branded products in Shopify like coffee mugs and NFTs. He plans to sell the beans later.

Butler waited for Bigface to launch to coincide with International Coffee Day on Friday, two days after National Coffee Day in the United States.

Butler said he traveled to coffee plantations, notably in Costa Rica, to study the coffee trade. He said his discussions with the farmers were “special” and he wanted to use Bigface to “tell the story of the grains and the farmers and their families. The time, effort, energy put into a cup of coffee”.

When the NBA traveled to Orlando to salvage its season last year, Butler saw a void on the remote Disney campus because he didn’t consider the coffee options to be good. Butler used his espresso machine and coffee beans from El Salvador to sell coffee for $ 20 a cup.

Butler found that coffee lovers confined to campus were ready to buy premium coffee. And that allowed him to capture a dominant share of the roughly $ 2,000 a day provided to players. He options sold, including “red eyes,” which is coffee combined with a shot of espresso, as well as macchiatos, cappuccinos, and lattes.

Bigface also won bids for coffee beans at the Excellence Cup auction last August. The purchase totaled over $ 65,000 for over 1,000 pounds of premium Salvadoran coffee.

Butler said the bubble trading experience presented a challenge away from basketball. “He’s just the competitor in me,” he added.

Shopify selects a group of entrepreneurial athletes for its program and does not take any fees or equity participation. Butler will get all the profits. But partnering with an NBA athlete allows Shopify to integrate a well-known figure into its ecommerce platform and it will use Butler’s name, image, and likeness for promotions.

The global coffee sector was valued at more than $ 102 billion last year, with an estimated compound annual growth rate of 4.28% through 2026, according to the Researchandmarkets company.

When asked what he would earn from Bigface, Butler, who has earned over $ 144 million in his NBA career, said, “It’s not about that to me. think basketball has been a great source of income for me and my family. ” He said he was in the business just to prepare and chat over coffee.

NBA training camps opened this week, and one of the league’s most intriguing teams is Butler’s team.

The Heat had an active offseason with All-Star Kyle Lowry in three years, $ 85 million signing and trade with the Toronto Raptors. The team also signed veteran PJ Tucker, who played last season for NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks. And Butler has agreed to an expansion that includes a player option estimated at $ 52 million in 2025.