Listen, I’m not saying that Miami Heat star forward Jimmy Butler’s impromptu coffee shop inside the NBA playoff bubble in Orlando has been the key to the team’s near-flawless success thus far, but how else do you explain a five seed blasting past the four and one seeds—only posting a single loss—and are on their way to doing the same to the two seed Boston Celtics? Clutch shooting? Lock down defense and show-stopping blocks from Bam Adebayo? Maybe. But’s what more likely is that Butler’s Big Face Coffee is the gasoline fueling this fine-tuned basketball machine. And Butler, every the shrewd business man, has applied to trademark it.
As we previously reported when the news first broke a few weeks back, Houston native Jimmy Butler took what can only be described as an abysmal coffee situation inside the NBA bubble at the Epcot Center as an opportunity to earn a little extra coin off of his well-compensated professional athlete counterparts. Operating a pop-up out of his hotel room under the name Big Face Coffee, Butler charged caffeine-deficient NBA players a flat rate $20 for their choice of “lattes, pour-overs, cappuccinos, Americanos, espresso, red eyes, mochas, macchiatos, and cafe au lait served in your choice of small, medium, or large.” Cash only. No IOUs. It was a fun story, especially for we coffee-loving sports-deprived sorts.
But the fun story may have some more serious underpinnings in the works, with Butler applying to trademark the Big Face Coffee name. As reported by the South Florida Sun Sentinel, working with a Pittsburgh legal firm, Butler filed for trademark protection on September 4th for all things Big Face. From the filing:
The mark consists of The words BIG FACE over the words COFFEE, an asterisk before the C in the word COFFEE, a smiley face design in the O in COFFEE, and an asterisk after the E in COFFEE, with a squiggly line below the word COFFEE, and the words NO I.O.U.s in a white box beneath the squiggly line.
Per the Sun Sentinal, the trademark would include apparel, general housewares (mugs), general cafe items, produce, and non-alcoholic beverages, like coffee.
With the legal foundations taking shape, it appears the 31-year-old superstar will be well on his way to a successful post-basketball career with Big Face Coffee. But with the way Butler and the Heat are rolling right now, it looks like it’ll probably still be a few years before Big Face makes big waves in the coffee world.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
