NBA star Jimmy Butler launches Bigface coffee brand

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

The Miami Heat star started his company in the 2020 NBA Covid bubble in Orlando, Florida, selling cups of coffee for $20 each. After that season, Butler filed for trademarks around Bigface and officially started plans to launch his coffee company. And on Friday he announced that he joined Shopify‘s creator program to boost his Bigface coffee brand.

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

“I wake up in the morning excited to train and go work out,” Butler said. “Then I want to hurry up and get home so I can practice my bartending,” he said, referring to making coffee drinks. For now, he’ll sell branded merchandise in Shopify like coffee mugs and NFTs. He plans to sell the beans later.

Butler, 32, waited to launch Bigface to align it with National Coffee Day on Wednesday and International Coffee Day on Oct. 1.

Butler said he traveled to coffee farms, including in Costa Rica, to study the coffee business. He said his discussions with local farmers were “special,” and that he wants to use Bigface to “tell the story behind the beans and the farmers and their families. The time, the effort, the energy put into a cup of coffee.”

When the NBA went to Orlando to save its season last year, Butler saw a void at the secluded Disney campus because coffee options weren’t good. Butler used his espresso machine and coffee beans from El Salvador to sell coffee for $20 per cup.

Butler found coffee-lovers confined to the campus were willing to purchase a superior coffee. And it allowed him to capture a dominant share of the roughly $2,000 per diem provided to players. He sold options, including the “red eye,” which is coffee combined with a shot of espresso, and macchiatos, cappuccinos and lattes.

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

Butler said the bubble business experience provided a challenge away from basketball. “It’s just the competitor in me,” he added.

Shopify selects a group of athlete entrepreneurs for its program and doesn’t take any fees or equity stake. Butler will get all the profit. But partnering with an NBA athlete allows Shopify to integrate a well-known figure into their e-commerce platform and they’ll 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% until 2026,…