Keurig Founding Engineer, Class of '82, Meets Honors College Students
Dick Sweeney, the Highlander alumnus and engineer who made Keurig coffee machines feasible, visited NJIT's Albert Dorman Honors College last week for his first meet-and-greet with students since the COVID pandemic.
Sweeney graduated with an industrial management degree in 1982 after several years of taking night classes and attributed his success to persistence, good luck and constantly hiring smart people. He is chair emeritus of the Honors College Board of Visitors.
Keurig, which means neat or appropriate in Dutch, started in 1993. The initial team had the idea and brought in Sweeney to make it mass-producible. His life prior to that included serving in Vietnam, for which he was awarded the Silver Star, being let go as a UPS driver, assembling machinery for dry cleaners, attending Newark College of Engineering on the G.I. Bill and then becoming a vice-president of manufacturing for various companies. He worked for a company in the espresso machine field, leading to his first meeting with the early Keurig team and being invited to join their endeavor.
Sweeney joked about his initial reaction and an epiphany: "It seemed like a simple idea to make a cup of coffee out of a salad dressing cup. How hard can it be? The business model is really simple: you identify a legally addictive substance, put it in a portion pack and collect the royalty."
Maria Pepper, a senior biomedical engineering major from Caldwell, said she enjoyed meeting Sweeney and hearing his story. "He's very humble. It was really inspiring to see how he built an empire," she said.
Pepper grew up wearing a scoliosis brace 20 hours a day. Good treatment enabled her to become a track star in high school and compete on the NJIT team. But she said the available treatments could stand much improvement, so she hopes to form her own company someday and solve such problems.
Sweeney said he's thrilled to support such ambition. He praised the current administration and urged them to continue offering more honors courses, creating new opportunities for non-honors students to take part in the program and further develop the honors fellow program for faculty to push NJIT academics even farther.
"Dick Sweeney is one of NJIT’s most storied alumni, and we are always grateful when he has time to join us. The scholars and the whole ADHC team are always inspired and energized by him," Dean Louis Hamilton said. "I hope all of the Dorman Scholars emulate his spirit of ingenuity, perseverance, and, most importantly, his unfailing commitment to serving his community."
