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Key Takeaways Haghani never planned to be a founder until her grandmother’s post-surgery recovery exposed how bad senior nutrition had become.
With no money or medical background, she built Lucille Health by assembling experts from Harvard, Erewhon and a Chicago lab.
Now her 92-year-old grandmother is a tester and customer, and Haghani is chasing a $6 billion market with almost no competition.
When Jess Haghani’s grandmother Lucille came home from heart surgery, the family did everything the doctors told them to. They bought the recommended food and shakes, feeding her a steady diet of ultra-processed products whose formulas hadn’t changed in decades. Haghani was stunned at what the medical system was handing an older woman in recovery.
“It was just the worst of the worst nutrition out there,” she says.
It was at that moment that Haghani, then a Harvard MBA student, decided this might be a category ripe for disruption. Older adults make up 20% of the population and are the fastest-growing demographic of the next decade, yet less than 1% of food and beverage innovation is aimed at them. She is now the founder and CEO of Lucille Health, a better-for-you nutrition brand for older adults, named after the grandmother who inspired it.
The company makes ready-to-drink shakes with higher protein, five grams of fiber and a shorter, cleaner ingredient list than the legacy brands she found so disappointing. Haghani recently came on the One Day with Jon Bier podcast to talk about taking on a $6 billion market most companies overlook, building a brand with no money and no medical background and why Lucille herself is still her toughest tester.
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<strong>Frozen in time</strong><br>
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