Brittany Romano, 32, was not looking to start her own long-distance rom-com last September when she showed up to JetBlue’s lounge at LaGuardia Airport 10 minutes before her flight was set to board — but she did.

That’s where she met Matt Harrington, 35, a schoolteacher from Pasadena, Calif. He had spied her rushing through security, and when she stopped in the lounge for her usual routine — “take a shot and use the restroom” — he sent her a tequila shot and took one himself. Then the two jogged to catch their plane, as it turned out they were on the same flight to Los Angeles.

Ms. Romano, an entertainment journalist who lives in New York, assumed that would be that, but Mr. Harrington begged a flight attendant to switch his seat so he could sit with her. More tequila shots followed over the course of the six-hour flight; the pair still talk daily.

There has always been something magical about an airport love story. “Airports are lawless,” said Natalie Stoclet, 32, a writer and designer based in Mexico City, who once had a flirtation with a man she met in the Iberia lounge at the Madrid airport. “You can have a cocktail at 8 a.m., wear compression socks with no shame and delusionally stare at the departures board, convincing yourself that you could change your flight and start a new life in Paris. Anything goes.” (Her lounge fling fizzled out, but at least she still has “a good airport story,” she said.)

But airport lounges, those calmer, semi-exclusive spaces away from the deadening realities of modern air travel, have increasingly become a locus of romance for millennials, who post TikTok videos of themselves getting dressed up to go to the lounge early before a flight, hoping to find their soul mate or, at the very least, a fresh romance. It’s the new, “I’m looking for a man in finance,” if you will.

“Romanticizing airports thinking I will casually find my future travel loving husband at one,” one TikTok user wrote. “Waiting mysteriously in the Emirates lounge waiting for my future husband to sweep me off my feet as I live in my own movie,” another user captioned her clip. “Can we have a designated ‘singles lounges’ at airports please,” asked a third.

Grace Ma, 38, an investor in New York, and a Delta and American Express Centurion lounge fanatic, said that lounges are the new members-only clubs — though more intimate and less intimidating — which makes them a prime location for dating. “It’s more of a targeted location to meet like-minded people versus going to a bar in a random city,” she said. “Someone who has access to a nice airport lounge likely already checks off a few boxes for you, which could be psychologically more comforting. For example, they are willing to spend the money to enter, they have travel status, they are flying a certain class airfare.”

Rachel Childress, 32, a server at the Delta One lounge in Logan Airport, in Boston, met her current partner there when he came in as a guest. In addition to the luxuries a lounge experience offers, it lowers the hurdles to meeting someone, she said.

“There’s also no obligation to have to see someone again. It makes connections more thrilling,” she said. “Plus, thinking about how crazy it is that your paths crossed with someone? The sequence of events that had to occur for you to meet them? It’s fate.”

Jennifer Higginbotham, 41, the director of premium services operations strategy and support, for American Airlines said “in-flight and Admirals Club meet-cutes are common.” The airline even hosted a wedding in its Nashville lounge. (Ms. Higginbotham’s husband proposed to her at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, so she’s quite the expert on airport love stories.)

Claude Roussel, who manages lounge experiences for Delta Air Lines, said the carrier’s public relations team has a plan of action for managing proposals, which includes decorating the lounge, helping facilitate the proposal, and creating a special food and drink cart for the couple — often involving photogenic espresso martinis.

Kishshana Palmer got the full experience. Ms. Palmer, 45, met cute in the Delta lounge at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport’s Terminal B, in the summer of 2023. Her boyfriend proposed in the same lounge a year later. “Suddenly team members come out from the four corners of the earth,” she said. “They make me reapply my lipstick and then tell him, ‘Do it again,’ because this brotherman didn’t think to film it.” But he broke things off before their aviation-themed wedding took place.

Ms. Palmer remains hopeful: “I still feel like I’m going to find my boo, and probably in another airport lounge,” she said.

Delta also pulled out all the stops last year when Ryan Scheb, 35, proposed to Philip Tuzynski, 37, at LaGuardia’s Delta Sky Club. The two are self-proclaimed “aviation geeks” from New York, whose idea of romance is sitting in the airline lounge with a cocktail, watching the planes take off.

Here for a Good time, Not a Long Time

While the promise of everlasting love is all well and good, not everyone is looking for commitment. Sometimes, a fling will do. YOLO-era singles chalk up the trend to two things: There is little to lose, and you’re both right there.

Silas Forest, 29, a creative director in Los Angeles, was lounging through a layover in the Delta Sky Club at Miami airport when he saw a cute guy out of the corner of his eye. They exchanged shy grins and nods, but then it was time for Mr. Forest to go to his gate, two terminals away. “I’m standing in line when I feel a tap on my shoulder, and I turn to find the man. I’m instantly smiling but surprised he found me. My group is called, and I tell him I’ve got to go, but feel the urge to lean in for a kiss. He also leans in and we kiss in front of a bunch of people,” he said. “I boarded my plane grinning ear to ear.”

Mr. Forest got the man’s contact information, but decided “to leave it at that — just one magical moment in the Miami airport.”

Benjamin Schmidt, 29, a New York writer, opened his Grindr app at a Delta lounge in San Francisco and agreed to meet a match at the lounge bar. “We flew back to New York together, with some discreet and playful hand-holding on the plane and flirty conversation,” he said. And then it ended. “It felt like I rented a boyfriend for the day,” Mr. Schmidt said.

Ms. Romano pointed out that airports offer few rules of behavior, and lounges give you the perfect setting for casual dating. “They have better lighting, free drinks, and no ‘What’s your bio?’ awkwardness,” she said. “The best part? If it’s not a match, one of you actually has to leave.”

People Are Craving Something Real

This love-in-the-lounge trend is more than a pang of nostalgia for rom-com fantasies or a millennial need to dissociate from reality. Travel experts and frequent travelers alike predict that airline lounges will begin to play a much bigger role in people’s romantic lives for one reason: Dating app culture has backfired.

“App culture, besides it being gamification, is designed for you to opt out,” said Ms. Palmer. Meeting someone in person, you start searching for something in common, she added. “And here, the lounge is your thing that you have in common.”

This all led Iñigo Merino, 30, to start a dating app aimed at fliers. “There’s so much digital burnout, of just being constantly online. We’re bombarded. And then there’s this love-hate relationship we have with dating apps,” said Mr. Merino, the founder and chief executive of Wingle, a new app that allows you to connect with users at the airport lounge and aboard your flight.

Wingle users put in their flight details, and when they arrive at the airport, they can flag their location — like which lounge they are in. Once the plane takes off, the seat map illuminates with other users, allowing users to start a chat. And when the plane lands, the chat disappears. “So, either what happens in the air stays in the air, or you share your contact information so you can continue the conversation in real life,” Mr. Merino said.

When people are traveling, he said, they are “in another mind-set, so you can make more meaningful connections. I mean, you’re stuck in this metal tube with up to 300 people, and I’m sure that among those hundreds of people there’s someone that you can have an interesting conversation with.”

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2025.

For many New Yorkers, Midtown Manhattan, with its gleaming skyscrapers and busy transportation hubs, lacks an element of cool and cachet that its more culturally vibrant neighbors have. Hordes of office workers, commuters and tourists typically flood the area, leaving it feeling anything but residential.

What Midtown does have, though, is a glut of underutilized office buildings. Two in particular brought Nathan Berman, chief executive of Metro Loft Management, to the area: the hulking buildings of Pfizer’s former headquarters on East 42nd Street near Grand Central Terminal. Metro Loft, along with David Werner Real Estate, is converting the buildings into about 1,600 rental apartments.

Once completed, the project would be the largest office-to-apartment conversion nationwide, Mr. Berman said. The first tenants are expected to move in at the end of next year.

The developers also recently bought an office building around the corner from the Pfizer site to create roughly 450 residences, 25 percent of which will be affordable housing.

“We go where there is opportunity to convert what we believe to be undervalued assets, and we can do that anywhere in Manhattan,” Mr. Berman added. “Right now, Midtown seems to be presenting the most opportunities for us.”

Mr. Berman has spent over two decades converting office buildings in the financial district, but the Pfizer project is his first in Midtown. He believes that future tenants, whom he calls “active younger professionals,” will forgo more traditional neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, Chelsea or the Upper East Side, with their charming cafes and green spaces, for splashy building amenities like a gym, a rooftop pool, lounges, co-working spaces, and a washer and dryer in each apartment.

“No one even needs a grocery store anymore, since everything gets delivered,” Mr. Berman said.

In addition, he said, as more companies order employees back to their desks, he hopes more people will want to live closer to the office, even if they have to be on site only part of the week. People “want to walk or bike or even scooter to their offices,” he said.

Arpit Gupta, an associate professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business, said the proximity to thousands of workplaces was one of Midtown’s selling points. And once people move in, it’ll help the neighborhood: More tenants will eventually attract “the construction of retail, food and beverage industries, which serve to attract other renters in a positive cycle,” she said.

Metro Loft was one of the first to transform moribund office buildings in the financial district into apartments. Mr. Berman’s first big project downtown, at 17 John Street, was converted in 1998. Since then, he has converted 15 buildings in the financial district, with four more in development and others in the pipeline.

In cities across the country, more office buildings have been turned into housing, as officials clamor to solve for the mismatch between a surfeit of outdated office buildings and a lack of housing.

This year, nearly 71,000 residences have either been approved, remain under construction or are in the planning phase, which is more than triple the number from three years ago, according to a February report from RentCafe. New York, which is the country’s largest office market, has over 8,300 offices set to be converted into apartments this year.

In other cities, developers often opt for areas with a mix of commercial and residential properties. Michael Pestronk, the chief executive of the development company Post Brothers, prefers converting office buildings into apartments in neighborhoods already replete with housing, he said. But his Philadelphia-based firm — which, according to its website, has worked on more than 30 properties — recently started work on converting buildings in Washington, D.C.

“We’ve certainly done developments in tertiary neighborhoods, but with the number of opportunities we’re seeing today, we feel like we don’t need to be in pioneering locations,” Mr. Pestronk said, referring to areas not considered traditionally residential. “Instead, we’re focused on main locations that are very obvious in terms of the demand.”

Many developers have been keen to convert office buildings as more properties sell at a discount, many of them in central business districts that for years have suffered from empty buildings and streets.

“From 2012 to 2019, these buildings that we’re converting were trading — even if they were basically obsolete — for $400 to $500 per square foot, and now they’re $100 to $200 a square foot,” Mr. Pestronk said.

Adapting older commercial properties can also be less costly than building new housing. Research from CBRE, a real estate firm, estimates the cost of conversion to be $100 to $500 or more per square foot, depending on the original layout. Those costs are still as much as 20 percent less than building something new because the edifice is retained, Mr. Pestronk said.

The biggest cost differential, he said, is from the time saved. Construction on a conversion can be completed as much as one year faster than building something from the ground up.

“The speed to market is worth almost as much as the savings from reusing the structure,” he added.

Commercial structures also have thicker floor slabs, built to accommodate heavy equipment, making them ideal for reducing noise in closer living arrangements.

But not all empty or outdated buildings can be converted. Estimates vary, but a Moody’s Analytics study from 2023 of New York offices found that only 3 percent were suitable for transformation. A study for the Brookings Institution suggested that 9 to 11 percent of buildings nationwide could be converted, a statistic that translates into about 2,500 buildings.

The difficulty in turning office buildings into apartments is that they are laid out differently. Office buildings, for example, may not have windows that open or have too much space from wall to wall.

Buildings that are converted are usually gutted and reimagined. The old Pfizer buildings have floors that are roughly 200 feet deep, and Mr. Berman will have to divide the space to meet light and air regulations, such as the requirement that each apartment has a minimum distance between an operable window and building walls.

Mr. Berman has had experience doing this. Most recently, he did it at 25 Water Street in New York’s financial district, which had a depth almost as large as Pfizer’s old offices. The solution: Create two atriums so that more windows can be added to apartments. The plan is to do the same at the Pfizer buildings.

Then there are complex zoning restrictions and higher interest rates, and even experienced developers like Mr. Berman could run into unexpected expenses that put a project at risk. Not to mention potential tariffs, which are a wild card that will affect the price of materials needed for new construction as well as conversions.

Post Brothers recently faced foreclosure at one of its buildings in Washington, and Metro Loft encountered financial problems because of rising interest rates at two properties, even though both were more than 90 percent occupied.

“If you’re highly leveraged and your rate doubles, it will put you in a tough situation,” a spokesperson for Metro Loft said.

As for whether young people will happily move to the bustle of Midtown: If the past is any indication, it’s possible. It happened in both the financial district and Hudson Yards, the mixed-use area on the western edge of Manhattan where Pfizer has relocated. Mr. Berman hopes to replicate the success in Midtown.

He said, “Shaking and transforming buildings in the middle of what is an office area takes an empty office building off the market and brings in residential and that will invigorate an area.”

Canada chooses a leader to take on Trump

Canadians vote on Monday to determine which political party forms their next government.

But President Trump’s tariff assault on Canada and his vow to annex the country and make it the 51st state have turned the federal election into a referendum on which of the two contenders — Prime Minister Mark Carney of the Liberal Party or Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservatives — can best handle the American president, Ian Austen writes for DealBook.

The only English-language election debate last week opened with the moderator asking Carney, who has been the prime minister for just over a month, what the “starting point” would be for talks with the Trump White House.

“The starting point has to be one of strength,” Carney responded.

Both candidates have promised a tough response. Trump’s belittling of Canada’s sovereignty and his tariffs, which have already led to layoffs and concerns about factory closings, have prompted a surge of patriotism among Canadians and open hostility toward the United States — the country’s largest trading partner. In sharp contrast with Mexico’s approach of dealing with Trump, both Carney and Poilievre have vowed to fight back.

Here are the strategies they’ve campaigned on:

• Hit back: Carney has emphasized his commitment to retaliatory tariffs. Poilievre has said that they are necessary to “deter” Trump’s trade attacks. Canada has imposed tariffs on imports from the United States that are expected to generate about 38 billion Canadian dollars annually, or about $27 billion.

  Trump has imposed tariffs against key sectors of Canada’s industrial economy: 25 percent levies on autos, aluminum and steel, and a similar levy on goods that are outside the scope of the trade agreement among the United States, Canada and Mexico. A tariff on auto parts is scheduled to take effect on Saturday.

  Autos and auto parts are Canada’s largest exports to the United States outside of oil and gas.

• Diversify: A former governor of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada, Carney conspicuously made his first trip as prime minister to meet with leaders in Britain and Europe. Canada has a free-trade agreement with Europe, but it is unclear how much potential Canada has to significantly raise exports to that market.

  Poilievre, a lifelong politician, has vigorously pushed to build a pipeline across Canada to ship oil and liquefied natural gas to Europe. Canada currently exports more than 80 percent of its energy to the United States. Carney has also suggested finding new energy markets and building pipelines.

• Canadianize: To end the current process of auto parts crossing the border several times, Carney has suggested the creation of “all-in-Canada” parts manufacturing network. He has offered no details on how he would persuade manufacturers to adjust their supply chains to suit Canada’s goals.

Neither candidate has gotten specific. Carney says his experience as a central banker and in private investment (he has a doctorate in economics, worked at Goldman Sachs and was chairman at Brookfield Asset Management and at Bloomberg) makes him the ideal negotiator and economic crisis manager.

Poilievre, who was campaigning on crime, taxes and high prices for food and housing before the tariffs and before the election was called, has not focused as directly on the trade war. Polls show the Liberals slightly ahead of the Conservatives in the popular vote, but the Liberals are likely to have a strong majority of the seats in the House of Commons to form the next government.

DEALBOOK WANTS TO HEAR FROM YOU

We’d like to know how the tariffs are affecting your business. Have you changed suppliers? Negotiated lower prices? Paused investments or hiring? Made plans to move manufacturing to the U.S.? Or have the tariffs helped your business? Please let us know what you’re doing.

HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING

China’s Huawei reportedly develops a new A.I. chip to take on Nvidia. It’s meant to compete with Nvidia’s most advanced semiconductor; TikTok parent Bytedance is among those in discussions to place orders, The Wall Street Journal reported. It’s the latest example of Beijing’s push to move away from U.S. technology in the face of export controls.

America’s academic leaders make a stand against President Trump. After the White House froze billions in federal funding for leading universities, a group has formed to counter the president’s broad attacks, with more than 400 college leaders signing a letter opposing Trump’s moves to audit curriculums and oversee hirings. Meanwhile, a private collective of top universities has banded together to plot strategy, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Gordon Brown lodges a criminal complaint against Rupert Murdoch’s papers. The former British prime minister alleges he has been a “victim of the obstruction of the course of justice” by Murdoch’s U.K. papers, as the phone hacking scandal that forced the closure of one of the media mogul’s tabloids and led to a split of his empire, continues. His U.K. company has denied the accusations.

A game of telephone

There’s more confusion on Monday about the state of U.S.-China tariff talks, as new data shows that global trade has begun to falter and jittery investors brace for a huge earnings week.

The latest: Beijing on Monday outright denied President Trump’s claim that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, called him to discuss their tit-for-tat trade clash. Trump told Time last week that they had in fact spoken, and that talks were progressing. Beijing’s statement comes after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has become a point person on trade negotiations, told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that he wasn’t aware of whether the two leaders had spoken.

Who to believe? Companies are focusing their attention on Wall Street and Washington. Several business leaders have used the earnings-call spotlight to warn about tariffs. The hope is that the message may reach Trump administration officials, adding to pressure on the White House to find an off-ramp with trading partners.

That said, Trump pushed back on the notion that he was swayed by restive bond holders in deciding earlier this month to pause implementation of reciprocal tariffs. “​​The bond market was getting the yips, but I wasn’t,” Trump told Time.

Meanwhile, the trade fallout worsens. Cargo shipments between the two countries have plummeted, and Temu, the popular Chinese retailing app that’s been hit especially hard by Trump’s tariffs, has jacked up costs for U.S. customers, Bloomberg reports. Economists have forecast that the levies could reignite inflation and ding economic growth, while retailers have begun to warn it could lead to empty store shelves.

That puts extra focus on a big week for earnings and economic data. What’s in store:

• Personal Consumption Expenditures, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, and first-quarter G.D.P., are set for release on Wednesday with recession fears on the rise.

• Friday is jobs day. Some economists expect to see a tariff-driven drop-off in hiring for the April payrolls report.

• There’s also an earnings-palooza, with four of the Magnificent 7 stalwarts set to report. First up in that grouping are Microsoft and Meta (on Wednesday); Apple and Amazon follow on Thursday.

Big Tech earnings have fueled a slew of market rallies over the past two years, and Google’s Alphabet and Tesla helped give stocks a boost last week. Can the tech giants keep the streak alive, or will trade-war tensions prevail?

The latest in the content wars: Spotify vs. YouTube

Spotify has paid more than $100 million to podcast publishers and creators since January, Jessica Testa is first to report for DealBook.

The payout is the result of a program introduced this year that opened up new revenue streams to eligible hosts. But it is also an attempt to draw more creators (and their audiences) to Spotify, as the rise of video podcasting has driven many of them to YouTube.

Video has come to dominate podcasting. More than half of Americans over the age of 12 have watched a video podcast — but primarily on YouTube, according to an Edison Research report from January. The service claims to reach 1 billion podcast consumers every month, making it the dominant platform for podcasts — a media king and kingmaker — and leaving onetime audio-only platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts in the dust. (Spotify introduced video podcasts in 2019.)

Compared with YouTube, Spotify has become a podcast underdog, with about 170 million monthly podcast listeners among its total audience of 675 million. One indication of how far Spotify has to go to catch up to the top player: YouTube paid out more than $70 billion to creators and media companies from 2021 to 2024.

The company reports earnings tomorrow and is expected to make about 540 million euros in pretax income on 4.2 billion euros in sales, according to S&P Capital IQ.

But Spotify remains a major player in the industry thanks in part to its talent roster — it distributes and sells advertising for the biggest podcast in the world, “The Joe Rogan Experience.” And it achieved its first full year of profitability in 2024. (Rogan’s podcasts are also available on YouTube.)

The new partner program aims to chip away at YouTube’s dominance. Spotify previously paid creators only by sharing advertising revenue with them, much like YouTube. Now it also gives them incentives to upload videos, with eligible creators earning additional money based on how much premium subscribers engage with their videos.

The company is trying to attract more viewers. At the same time that Spotify announced the partnership program in November, it announced that paid subscribers in certain markets wouldn’t have to watch dynamic ads in video podcasts. Video consumption has already increased by more than 40 percent since January, according to Spotify.

Can Spotify persuade creators to shift priorities? David Coles, host of the horror fiction podcast “Just Creepy: Scary Stories,” said he is re-evaluating his “home platform” after his Spotify revenue recently surpassed his YouTube revenue. Last quarter, Coles said he received about $45,500 from Spotify. After joining the company’s new partner program, his quarterly Spotify income rose to about $81,600.

This increase can be even more dramatic for larger shows and podcast companies, like YMH Studios, a comedy network with 2.1 million YouTube subscribers that produces popular podcasts including “2 Bears, 1 Cave.” While declining to share exact figures, YMH Studios said its quarterly Spotify revenue more than tripled after joining the partner program.

Although creators emphasized that these are still early days, Alan Abdine, the head of advertising revenue at YMH Studios, called the new payment program “a game-changer” and “a very happy surprise.”

“Our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires. No one here is happy about it.”

— Scott Pelley, the “60 Minutes” correspondent. He delivered an extraordinary on-air rebuke last night during the news program’s first episode since the resignation of Bill Owens, who had led the award-winning CBS program since 2019. Paramount, which owns CBS and is led by Shari Redstone, is now in mediation with President Trump over his $20 billion lawsuit against CBS News. It comes as Redstone is seeking government approval for her company’s merger with Hollywood studio Skydance.

THE SPEED READ

Artificial Intelligence

• Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence business xAI is looking to raise $20 billion at a valuation of $120 billion. (Bloomberg)

• Google’s A.I. staff in the U.K. plan to unionize to fight against the company’s plans to sell its services to defense contractors. (FT)

Politics, policy and regulation

• President Trump’s son, Don Jr., and tech entrepreneur Omeed Malik started a private Georgetown club for the ultra rich who want to get even closer to the president. (Politico)

• Some Republican lawmakers could sink President Trump’s tax bill over key issues such as the SALT deduction and the Inflation Reduction Act. (WSJ)

Best of the rest

• Behind the private group chats on Signal and WhatsApp that are shaping tomorrow’s conversations on podcasts, X, and Substack. (Semafor)

• Five years after Carlos Ghosn escaped in a crate, the fugitive and former head of Nissan is now teaching business strategy at a university in Lebanon. (WSJ)

We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.

When Jonathan Neman was a student at Georgetown in the mid-2000s, he and some friends wanted to start a restaurant. A fast-food restaurant, but it would be healthy. And cool.

The documentary “Super Size Me” had made waves, and “we were going to be rejecting the fast food of the previous generation,” Mr. Neman said.

He and his business partners, Nicolas Jammet and Nathaniel Ru, opened the first Sweetgreen in 2007, on the edge of campus on M Street in Washington. As they expanded, they decided against franchising the brand, keeping control of every new location. Soon it became a buzzy millennial lifestyle brand. It sponsored an annual music festival. It went public in late 2021.

Sweetgreen now has more than 250 restaurants across the United States. The chain is known for its endlessly customizable salads — and for how quickly the cost of all those extra toppings and dressings can add up. (A recent lunch there cost me $16.28.)

The company also runs a growing number of locations that include what it calls the Infinite Kitchen, with salad-slinging robots that assemble bowls faster than human workers.

With great fanfare, Sweetgreen recently put fries on its menu — air-fried in avocado oil, to make customers feel better about adding a side of carbs to a salad. Much of its food is sourced locally, including avocados from California, which will limit the hit the company takes on tariffs, executives have told investors.

And Sweetgreen doesn’t cater just to office workers eating salads at their desks. Mr. Neman, 40, said he had heard that teenagers were “obsessed” with the salads, which wasn’t the case when Sweetgreen started. “The fact that they think that eating healthy is cool is something that we envisioned,” he said at his office in Los Angeles, where the company is now based.

Back in Washington, the Trump administration is also thinking about what goes into food. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the standard-bearer of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, recently declared that “sugar is poison” and pushed to ban artificial dyes in foods.

Some of those aims resonate with Mr. Neman, whose company worked with the former first lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign. But he — like many other company leaders — is trying to talk about the company’s priorities (like eliminating seed oils) without being pulled into the polarized politics of the moment.

“We say we’re not red or blue, but we’re green,” he said.

This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.

Sweetgreen is all about healthy ingredients. Now, there is the “Make America Healthy Again” movement and R.F.K. Jr. pushing to ban artificial dyes in food. What are your thoughts on that?

As it relates to “Make America Healthy,” funny story: In 2016, during a festival, we had a campaign that was a joke, a play on “Make America Great Again.” We made “Make America Healthy Again” hats.

Wow.

We are on the team of anyone who wants to help make America healthier. Back in the days of the Obama administration, we partnered very closely with Michelle Obama.

With R.F.K. Jr., I’ll speak to the parts related to our world. I think bringing more transparency to our food system is great. I think some of those dyes are bad. Sweetgreen has never sold soda very intentionally. We’d make a lot more money if we did. A lot of people wish we did. We never have and I don’t think ever will.

We don’t like to get involved in the rest of it. So we’re not trying to insert ourselves politically, either me personally or as a brand.

Have you communicated with the White House about healthy foods?

We haven’t been directly involved at this point. But if there’s a place for us to help, we’re totally up for it.

There have been cuts at the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees food safety. Do you have any concerns around food safety in the U.S. right now?

I think some of the things I’ve seen could be a little bit alarming. Others seem great.

What are the things that concern you?

I’d want to be careful to have certain guardrails around food safety, for example. And to be careful that there are not any adverse impacts to moving too fast. But overall, I think more transparency around the food system, promoting more real food, getting rid of these artificial chemicals that are allowed in our food and removing any conflicts of interest in people that are regulating our food are all good things.

Let’s talk about the robots. Will they help with profitability?

Absolutely. So what we’ve seen is at the store level, the Infinite Kitchen adds at least seven points of margin. So if you look at our store, right now we’re about a 20 percent margin business. An Infinite Kitchen store should be at least seven points better.

So as more robots make more salads, can people expect prices to come down?

We are very conscious of making sure that Sweetgreen can be something for everyone. I think automation does give us a hedge as labor costs continue to go up, to be able to drive more value and offer that to our customer.

How much is too much to pay for a salad?

It really depends what you put in it. When you think about the cost of something, you have to sometimes think about the total cost. There’s the cost to you, but when you eat certain things, what’s the cost to your health? What’s the cost to the environment? People are paying not only for the quality of the taste in the food, but the fact that it’s made by hand, the fact that we pay our farmers and our team members fairly.

What’s your back story? Tell me about your parents and growing up in Los Angeles.

My parents immigrated here in 1979. They were Iranian Jews who came during the revolution. And that was a big part of my story growing up because I think about how fragile your life and reality can be.

I’m the oldest of four boys. Being Jewish is a big part of my identity. I’ve always been very connected to Israel and my Jewish faith and big family.

My dad has four siblings. They each have four kids, so 20 cousins. Shabbat every Friday. A lot of us Persian Jews came to Los Angeles during that time.

Entrepreneurship is really a part of the culture. Growing up, I knew very few people who worked for big companies. Everybody was a small-business owner in some way. My dad and his brothers worked together. They started a textile business.

I always knew I wanted to be in business. From a very early age my dad would take me to work with him. One of my earliest memories was that I’d want to put on a suit — because he put on a suit — and go to his factory and walk around.

You had this great network of entrepreneurs during the start-up process. Were you calling your dad?

I had a lot of mentors in the community, including my dad. Always was and still is. I always give my dad a lot of credit because I don’t think he expected me to go to Georgetown and then to, like, start a little salad shack.

What was it like to be an entrepreneur in Washington at that time?

Entrepreneurship has become a lot sexier over the past 20 years. At the time, especially at Georgetown, that wasn’t the culture. The cool thing was going to get a job in government or consulting or banking.

I got accepted to what I thought was my dream job, at Bain & Company, the consulting firm.

I would have had to leave D.C. The restaurant was up and running. I spoke to my partners, like what should I do? Should I stay? Should I go? They’re like, “It’s one restaurant now. Why don’t you go and get these skills and then see what happens?” I went and realized consulting wasn’t really for me, especially after being an entrepreneur.

Finally, it was actually a conversation with someone at Bain. I always remember this conversation because he’s like: “Listen, you have two big opportunities to take huge risks in your life. One is now. The other is after your kids are out of school. You don’t have anything to worry about right now.”

I remembered this phrase: “You can’t fall from the floor.”

Time for the lightning round. Do you have any secret Sweetgreen menu tips?

The big unlock to the secret menu is the mixing of dressings. Putting two together, like spicy cashew with a green goddess. You have this whole different experience.

Do you use A.I.? If so, what was the last question you asked a bot?

I do use A.I. a lot. The last thing I did was not a work thing. It was personal. I have two kids, a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old. I put a picture of them in and asked what they’re going to look like when they grow up. It has blown my mind because I can’t unsee it now.

What other C.E.O. do you admire?

I’d always looked up to Howard Schultz. I think what he did at Starbucks was amazing.

Do you work on a plane, or do you zone out?

I work a lot on the plane. It’s this amazing quiet time where I can do a lot of the work that I can’t do day to day.

How do you sign off your emails?

Usually just “JN.” If it’s a more inspirational message, I’ll write, “Onward.”