Jimmy Butler’s first customer still owes him money.
In the summer of 2020, while holed up in an Orlando hotel during the NBA’s bubble season amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Butler first began the side hustle that’s since become one of his defining characteristics: selling coffee.
Using an espresso machine in his hotel room, Butler opened what could be considered the first location of Bigface, a coffee brand that Butler has since turned into a legitimate business. In the bubble, however, Butler was looking for a way to take his mind off of basketball — and take advantage of his rich, captive clientele, charging $20 per drink. (Hence the name Bigface.)
Butler’s first customer was his then-Miami Heat teammate Goran Dragic, whom Butler affectionately refers to as his brate, or brother in Slovenian. Except, according to Butler, Dragic never paid the hefty fee for all his drinks.
“My first sale was, ‘I don’t have cash on me right now but I’ll get it to you,’” Butler recalls. “He actually made the same excuse every time. So Goran actually owes me quite a lot of money for all the coffee he hustled me out of.”
But what Butler got out of the transactions was more valuable to him than a few extra $20 bills. It was the realization of how much he loved interacting with people over a cup of joe.
“Being in the bubble, all you had was hoop, hoop and more hoop,” Butler told NBC News in December. “[Bigface] was just an experiment at the time. It was some coffee with a bunch of sugar in it. We get out the bubble, and I’m like, ‘Man, I miss those days sitting around, making coffee and having conversations. Why can’t I do that every day?’”
A little more than four years later, Butler finally gave himself an opportunity to have those moments. In December, the Golden State Warriors forward opened his first brick-and-mortar location of Bigface, located in Miami’s Design District. The coffee once only available to residents of the Orlando bubble is now accessible to the masses.
(The shop opened while Butler was still a member of the Heat, the team he was traded from in February after a contentious exit.)
“It’s so surreal because this is another thing I said I wanted to do, and I went out and made it happen,” Butler says. “That’s what this story is for me. Man, I had a dream, I worked at it, and then one day, bam, here we are with a coffee shop.”
The Bigface store officially opened on Dec. 6. The night before, Butler hosted a launch party, with several of his celebrity friends showing up including future basketball Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony, music producer DJ Khaled and soccer star Paul Pogba.
While the star-studded launch could make Bigface seem like a vanity project for Butler, the six-time NBA All-Star is deeply involved in the business. Over the last few offseasons, for example, Butler has traveled all over South America sampling beans to sell both online and in his store. (The chief operating officer of Bigface, Britt Berg, is a former exec at the millennial-loved Intelligentsia.)
The venture has afforded Butler new ways to connect with people, such as the time he drank his own coffee with Brazilian soccer icon Neymar in Brazil.
“We’re sitting there chopping it up about everything, bro,” Butler says. “I’m like, ‘Man, I’m really sitting here drinking my coffee with one of the greatest soccer players ever.’ And it’s simple, life is good. It was crazy to be having my coffee in Brazil, which is the biggest exporter of coffee in the world, with the biggest Brazilian in the world.”
You don’t have to be Neymar to chat with Butler over coffee, however. Before moving west to Golden State, Butler was frequently behind the counter making drinks himself and chatting with customers. Butler says he welcomes the people who want to make a connection with him as opposed to only asking for a photo or autograph.
“That’s what I want my life to be about, be as human as I can around everybody,” Butler says. “I want you to come in and have a conversation, get to know me on a personal level. Whether they see me or Khaled or Neymar, whoever it is. I don’t want you to take a picture with them, Look at them as a human being, have everyday conversations. That’s what this whole venture has been about.”
This article originally appeared on chof360.com. Read more from NBC News:
