Home Cafe: Tommy Hilfiger Outlet
This week's spotlight is on Cat Penagos
This week we wanted to recognize Cat Penagos who is our Team Lead over at the Tommy Hilfiger location located inside of the Vineland Outlets and has been with us since 2019. While Cat is an incredible and irreplaceable member of our team, she is also an incredible artist! It is our honor to shine some light on one of the most amazing members of our team. Prior to Cat coming to Foxtail, she was a house studio artist for Axiom Gallery in Winter Park while finishing her BFA at UCF. She has roughly about 7 years of coffee experience total and has been addicted to the industry since entering when she was in high school.
Some of Cat’s fondest memories are when she was in Colombia sitting on her front porch drinking Cafe Tinto with her Abuelita. Her Grandmother taught her to appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into every single cup of coffee and the relationship they have with the land it came from. She is a first-generation Colombian and really appreciates the sense of togetherness that coffee can bring. It’s always a center point of her family gatherings and knows that there are other families who share a similar feeling. Cat’s experience with coffee feels valued at Foxtail and her passion for the craft that goes into our community is something she believes people can taste in the drinks she creates. Cat’s go-to coffee order is an Iced Americano with an extra double shot and extra peppermint.
Cat’s favorite part of her day is her morning routine. She’s a natural early riser so each morning she likes to begin her day with a cup of coffee, some light reading, breakfast, and an hour of Rupaul’s Drag Race. “I’ve seen it a million times but it reminds to be myself, unapologetically”, says Cat. While Cat isn’t working day to day at Foxtail, she juggles multiple commission and client projects as a freelance artist and designer. You can find her sketching, painting, glass soldering, drawing, or even fiddling around with Adobe programs. One of her proudest accomplishments is having her personal artwork permanently installed in the late Zaha Hadid’s One Thousand Museum. She was incredibly humbled to be selected as one of the artists to represent everything the architect stood for: strong minority women who are paving their own creative path.
Cat aims to continue her creative practice as an artist and hopes to work on even larger projects with each client. She likes to be a bridge for those who feel that the art world is intimidating, most of her clients approach her through Instagram DM’s! It’s a changing world and it excites Cat to see others participating.