“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.
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