Jimmy Butler reveals how he got into coffee culture and how Big Face Coffee came about during his Miami Heat tenure

Jimmy Butler was featured on CBS Mornings' broadcast on March 1st as they covered his Big Face Coffee passion project


Jimmy Butler reveals how he got into coffee culture and how Big Face Coffee came about during his Miami Heat tenure

Jimmy Butler

Jimmy Butler is a guy who always wants to do the crazy things, the cool things and the unconventional things. It was hard to pin down the former Miami Heat superstar’s true passions off the court – save for his love of dominos – but that changed during the NBA bubble in Disney World when he gave us a sneak peek of his Big Face Coffee venture that started out as a joke, but became a real thing soon after.

Butler made coffee for his teammates and sold it to them at exorbitant rates during the Heat’s first sojourn to the NBA Finals without LeBron. The then-31-year-old’s actions at the time were seen as a comical gimmick typical of NBA superstars. But Butler was far from done with his experiments with coffee. The man would carry his passion for the beans outside of the Disney World bubble and into the real world.

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Big Face Coffee was the subject of a CBS Mornings segment on network television on March 1st. The Golden State Warriors star appeared as a guest with Michelle Miller and Dana Jacobson to expound on his passion for coffee. According to Jimmy Butler himself, he was not a big fan of coffee for a long time. He described his coffee-drinking routine as simply pouring a bunch of sugar into a brew and drinking it:

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I just got to thinking and realizing how much people actually have in common with one another if you can just sit down and have a cup of coffee and talk about football or what type of milk that you like in coffee and how you drink it. And then I just started nerding out a little bit.

Jimmy Butler said

He then described an exchange with his trainer on how his excessive dumping of sugar into his coffee could render his other dietary restrictions insignificant due to how bad it would be for his constitution. Over time, Butler learned to omit foods containing sugar from his diet. It seems to definitely have done some good for him, as Butler continues to be an All-Star caliber guy at the age of 35.

How is Jimmy Butler’s venture Big Face doing currently?

Butler sold his coffee to his Miami Heat teammates at $20 a pop during the NBA bubble. He had the same prices for his small, medium and large cups, prompting teammates to test more of his brew with the large option. This price point is understandably quite high – you can get Cafe Lattes or Cappuccinos for between $5 to $8 at most upscale coffee chains across the USA. However, he built a lifestyle brand around the idea of Big Face.

Butler launched his first brick-and-mortar Big Face store in Miami’s Design District last December. It is a passion project for the man from Tomball, Texas, and he hopes to build it into a place where coffee culture is celebrated and coffee farmers can make the money he believes they’re worth. According to him, Butler has never ‘sold’ a cup of coffee himself, preferring to keep dollar bills with big faces (Benjamins, as they’re called) when he received them in payment during the NBA bubble. His Big Face store does, however, retail cups of coffee at prices ranging from $4 to $10.

Butler claims to hand-pick coffee strains on his own during trips to plantations where he sources his brews from. T