Alumni Spotlight: Tim Noonan ’05

Following What Intrigues You

By Jana F. Brown

Tim Noonan ’05 still remembers his parents’ reaction when he told them about his first job out of college.

“My parents said, ‘You went to Georgetown and now you’re going to drive an ice cream truck?’” Noonan recalls, noting that he was actually managing a frozen yogurt and salad shop on wheels. “And I responded, ‘No, it’s something bigger.’”

Those instincts were correct, and within six months of accepting that job as director of the Sweet Flow Mobile for an ambitious startup called sweetgreen, he had transitioned into a project management role, overseeing the design and construction of the healthy fast food company’s rapid expansion across Washington, D.C., New York City, and Boston. As the son of a construction owner and developer, Noonan had an early interest in architecture, which served him well in helping sweetgreen expand.

A decade and a half into his tenure with sweetgreen, Noonan has taken on increasingly senior roles, from overseeing real estate, design, and construction as senior vice president (SVP) of development to leading the research and development team to rethink sweetgreen’s business model and integrate more technology. In his current role as SVP of operations innovation, Noonan is focused on designing the experience and operating model for its new automated restaurant with “The Infinite Kitchen.” The company’s 13 (and counting) automated locations feature on-site digital ordering and automated bowl assembly. Noonan is also responsible for designing the hiring, training, and operational processes needed to successfully implement the innovative automated restaurant model at scale. 

His willingness to take a chance on an uncertain endeavor combined with his deep institutional knowledge and experience as one of the first hires in what is now a multi-billion-dollar company with nearly 250 locations and more than 6,000 employees nationwide have made Noonan a key leader in sweetgreen’s strategic initiatives.

“I often feel and act as the fourth founder of this company,” Noonan explains. “Every night after work, I would go to dinner with the founders. They would talk about their vision for the company. They would say, ‘We can be bigger than McDonald’s. We’ll take down unhealthy eating. We can make healthy food fast and easy.’ And I thought, ‘Let’s do this.’”

A Dover native, Noonan came to Berwick as a ninth grader, where he played hockey and lacrosse, favored STEM courses, and loved to draw. He credits a conversation with Director of College Counseling Moira McKinnon ’88 with encouraging him to apply to Georgetown, a school he had not previously considered. Noonan ended up loving life in D.C. and studying finance and marketing at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, with an eye toward an investment banking career. But the economic recession at the time made Noonan reconsider, so he responded to the Sweetflow (is it Sweetflow or Sweet Flow?) Mobile posting (from fellow Georgetown alums and sweetgreen founders Jonathan Neman, Nicolas Jammet, and Nathaniel Ru) and was excited right away.

“It was a really different kind of interview,” he recalls. “I was wearing a suit, getting ready to answer investment-banking-style questions about how many golf balls can fit into a jet and how many windows are in New Jersey. And they were sitting in jeans and T-shirts asking me ‘What's the last song you played on your iPod? How would you create community? How would you use Twitter to create fandom?’ I liked the atmosphere.”

Still, Noonan didn’t think he’d stay at the company for the long haul, especially when sweetgreen headquarters moved to California and he was asked to come along. But his willingness to pivot, to be flexible in the vision he had for himself, convinced him that was the right move.

“It’s important to know a decision you make doesn’t have to be permanent,” he says. “You should move toward the things that intrigue you and see where they take you. When my company decided to relocate to California, I had no desire to live in Los Angeles. But I loved the company, the people, and the mission, so I relocated because I knew, worst case scenario, if I didn’t like it, I would just move myself back.”

That was nine years ago, and Noonan and sweetgreen are still going strong. In 2021, he played a key role in sweetgreen’s decision to go public. A personal highlight was being on the podium when he and other sweetgreen leaders rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. The company is currently leading the charge as the first chain to implement automation through its Infinite Kitchen technology.

The automated process of scooping ingredients into bowls that move along a track has helped improve accuracy and consistency in delivering customized orders, especially for sweetgreen’s growing online ordering business. Automation, Noonan explains, also allows sweetgreen team members to focus more on providing quality customer service, rather than just performing assembly line tasks. Reduced labor requirements amid nationwide staffing shortages also make it easier for sweetgreen to open new locations at a faster pace.

“This helps improve the overall customer experience in our restaurants,” Noonan says, noting that the company is looking to have its locations fully automated by 2030, “and helps sweetgreen grow its footprint and bring our healthy fast-food concept to more communities.”

In addition to mobile ordering, sweetgreen has added pickup lanes and transparent supply chain information (including listing their local producers on chalkboards in the restaurants) to provide a differentiated customer experience compared to traditional fast food. As Noonan heads into another year with the company, he talks about the expansion into suburban areas to reach a wider demographic beyond the urban, health-conscious consumers sweetgreen initially targeted.

The company’s mission to provide healthy, fresh food that’s fast and convenient is something that continues to appeal to Noonan, who considered himself more of an ice cream fan than a salad eater when he first took the chance on an unproven concept at age 22. In addition to upward career mobility over the last 15 years, he also owes something else to the company. “I actually met my wife at sweetgreen,” he says, “so it literally changed my life.”