Kate Vrijmoet

About

Kate Vrijmoet

CEO/Founder

necessary & sufficient coffee®

GS10ksb, NAWBO, WBDC, Leadership Eastside, Let’s Talk Womxn cohost

Kate Vrijmoet is the CEO and founder of necessary & sufficient coffee, a Chicago specialty coffee shop take-out window in Logan Square and dine-in café in Printers Row. necessary & sufficient coffee was founded in 2019 and began as a Placemaking in Art project.

Like many in the Specialty Coffee world, Vrijmoet has been numerous things in her careers; art director, creative director, designer, professor, community activist and change-maker. Kate Vrijmoet received her MFA from Syracuse University. Her paintings and installations focus on issues of consciousness, privilege, access, and scale.

As a café owner, Vrijmoet’s goal is to connect community through place in specialty coffee. Necessary & suffient coffee focuses on community, sustainability and craft. They are the only hospitality business in Chicago that is currently Living Wage for US certified. They are partnered with The Shedd Aquarium in the Let’s Shedd Plastic program, and Oceanic Global Blue Action Certified for their sustainabily practices. They proudly report having diverted over 43,000 pounds from landfill to healthy composted soil as of January 2024.

Vrijmoet’s café highlights local, woman- and minority-owned small businesses in their carefully curated partnerships. And they partner with esteemed roaster Olympia Roasting Company for their award-winning espresso and coffee offerings, ethical standards, and quality of life mission.

Working across mediums, Vrijmoet uses the tools of classical painting to create high-impact experiences for her audience—experiences associated more with theatre. She is known for her large-scale water paintings and her life paintings, The Accident Painting series, as well as her social practice work including a traveling exhibit: The Incredible Intensity of Just Being Human.

“My mission and job as an artist is to use art to facilitate deep connections among us, in essence, my job is to wake us up.”