The top 10 nearest neighbors for Noodles & Company span five distinct subcategories — QSR, Thrift Stores, Athletes, TV Personalities, and Sports Leagues — with no single cluster dominating and scores compressed into a narrow band from 0.76 down to 0.74.

The shape is flat: Jimmy John's leads at 0.76, but the drop to Once Upon a Child (0.74) is modest, and the remaining eight neighbors — Dan Orlovsky (0.74), Charissa Thompson (0.74), NFL Films (0.74), Adam Schefter (0.73), Nate Burleson (0.73), HOMAGE (0.73), Boulevard Brewing Co. (0.73), and Graeter's Ice Cream (0.73) — are essentially tied. The only other Restaurant-subcategory entity in the top 10 is Graeter's Ice Cream at 0.73; the rest are drawn from sports media personalities, a thrift retailer, a fashion brand, and a brewery. That cross-kind composition is the defining feature here: the audience shape Noodles & Company shares most closely is not primarily with other food brands but with NFL-adjacent journalists, athletes, and TV personalities, alongside value-oriented retail.

The flat distribution, with no standout neighbor and a mix of subcategories that skews heavily toward sports media figures, suggests an audience whose shape is defined by a specific regional and sports-media consumption pattern rather than by food-category loyalty alone.