NBA’s Jimmy Butler talks about creating his own coffee brand, Shopify partnership, basketball

NBA All-Star and Big Face Coffee Founder Jimmy Butler joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss his Big Face coffee brand, partnering with Shopify, and his plans for basketball.

Video Transcript

[AUDIO LOGO]

DAVE BRIGGS: Millions of Americans took on side hustles during the pandemic to bring in a little extra cash. One of them just happens to be a six-time NBA All-Star for the Miami Heat, who's made more than $200 million in his career. Jimmy Butler started serving his own coffee in the NBA's COVID bubble back in 2020, charging 20 bucks a cup. That hustle has brewed into a full-fledged national coffee brand, Big Face Coffee. I asked the NBA superstar what ignited his new passion.

JIMMY BUTLER: I was just extremely bored. I wanted to try to compete at something else. So, like, every summer, it's football/soccer. It's football, American football, it's tennis, it's pickleball, it's paddle, so many things. And in the bubble, it's like, I can't do all these other things. Let me figure out how to become the best barista so whenever I get out of this thing, I can challenge all the well-known baristas around the world, whip their tail at latte art.

Obviously, didn't turn out that way. Still can't do it the way that I want to do it. But that's how the whole thing started. And then I racked up a tab on Amazon of just ordering way too much stuff that I didn't need. Everybody was sending me beans from everywhere around the world, all types of machinery. So I got to really hone in on that craft. That's how it all started.

DAVE BRIGGS: And so you brought an espresso machine into the bubble and were charging fellow NBA players--

JIMMY BUTLER: About three.

DAVE BRIGGS: How much were you charging them per cup?

JIMMY BUTLER: I was-- you know, whenever I went into the bubble, they gave us per diem. But it was during COVID, so, like, nobody used cash. So I realized that you had to use like a card or your wristband to pay for things around Disney in the bubble. So everybody just had, like, I don't know how much it was now, probably like $2,400 or something, $2,440. And I realized that, like, after-- if I charged 20 bucks per coffee, there's only two 20s in every envelope. And then every other bill is a $100 bill.

So my plan was, you know what, I'll give them some good coffee. They'll come back. They'll come with two 20s the first two times. And then the next time, they'll come back and they'll have to pay me for a hundred. And then when they pay me with the hundred, I'm just going to take it and be like, sorry, don't have any change. 100 bucks per cup of coffee. So the plan was there. It definitely was. I thought this out very thoroughly. Nobody gave me a $100 bill.

DAVE BRIGGS: So at what point did you realize you had a real business opportunity here that would extend beyond--

JIMMY BUTLER: You have everything. You really have everything.

DAVE BRIGGS: I got props, man.

JIMMY BUTLER: Wow.

DAVE BRIGGS: So at what point did you realize you had a business that extended beyond the bubble?

JIMMY BUTLER: Whenever I realized how everybody can relate over coffee, you know? Whether you have cold coffee or hot or iced or a nitro brew, or you drink almond milk or oat milk or coconut milk or whole milk or skim, whatever it may be, there's always a conversation to have between what some people call strangers whenever you're walking into a coffee shop. But all y'all have something in common.

And that was my biggest thing is, try to get everybody to understand you got so much more in common than you do not have in common. You just got to sit down and talk it out over a cup of coffee. And so that was where all of this came from. And my love of coffee just grew, just like my love of people and all the other different types of cultures that I've been able to be around. But at the very front of all of these cultures, there's always some type of coffee that exists.

DAVE BRIGGS: Sounds like we need to have politicians in Washington sit down over a cup of Big Face and just talk it out. So there was a partnership--

JIMMY BUTLER: That my work.

DAVE BRIGGS: There was a partnership with Shopify, I believe. Tell me about that.

JIMMY BUTLER: Shopify really, really, really helped me get everything underway when you're talking about the planning of what we're going to be doing in the future. We're talking about our online sales. And the way that everything looks, Shopify did a great job of really helping me, a new entrepreneur, really find out what to do, how to do it, and how to make it as seamless as possible.

So I'm super grateful for Spotify because I had no idea how difficult this whole venture thing really is. But it's fun because it's not hard. And I don't think anything that's worth ever having is going to be easy. So I'm still 10 toes down, both feet in, and making this coffee thing very, very, very successful.

DAVE BRIGGS: So what's the goal with it? Are you going after the Starbucks and the Dunkin' Donuts of the world? Or where do you hope to take it?

JIMMY BUTLER: I don't ever like to compare. So I'm not going after anybody. I just want to be the best version of myself and what Big Face Coffee, the Big Face brand is going to be. I just want people to be nice to one another. Honestly, I just want everybody to be able to sit down in my cafes that I will have one day with me behind the bar making the coffee and not take pictures, not be on social.

I don't care about the phone eats first or the phone drinks first, whatever they call it. Just sit down and have a nice conversation, meet somebody new, talk about what you all have in common. Because that's how this all started for me in London, and I want to just take that everywhere. Whether it be in Miami, San Diego, Texas, Europe, let's sit down over some coffee.

DAVE BRIGGS: So where do we hope to take the business [INAUDIBLE]? Is it going to be an online business? Is there going to be coffee shops? Is it going--

JIMMY BUTLER: For sure.

DAVE BRIGGS: --to be in grocery stores? Tell me what that looks like.

JIMMY BUTLER: It's going to be all of that. It's going to be all of that. I just-- like I always say, I got to keep the main thing. The main thing right now, that is basketball. And we got to-- I got to do much better in that for the Miami Heat. But this coffee thing is real, and it's going to be in grocery stores. I promise you, I'm going to have a bunch of different cafes all over the world, not just in the States, all over the world.

And I want to be able to take these classes to where I am a barista, to where whenever you see me, you're like, where's Jimmy? I haven't seen Jimmy. Oh, that's where he is. He's in one of his 19,000 coffee shops actually making the coffee, actually having conversations with the customers, and, like, making it a real home feel in whatever shop that I'm in.

DAVE BRIGGS: You mentioned the primary focus is, of course, the basketball court. And the Miami--

JIMMY BUTLER: Of course.

DAVE BRIGGS: --Heat off to a rocky start. How concerned are you? How concerned should fans be?

JIMMY BUTLER: Not very. We got a long way to go, yes, but it's very possible. We've got everybody that's-- we want to win. We want to do right. And we definitely want to win the championship. So I'm not too worried. If you were to ask me this four months into the season and we're still playing like this, yeah, I'd be worried. But right now, it's just a couple of tweaks that we have to do. And we'll get to it, I promise you that.

DAVE BRIGGS: Heat are 5 and 7. I'm due for my fifth cup of coffee. Thank you to Jimmy Butler there. I appreciate that.