Frozen in time<\/strong> <\/p>\nWalk down any grocery aisle and you will find category after category remade by better-for-you brands. Then you reach adult nutrition, and the same products from the 1970s and 1980s still sit on the shelf in nearly the same packaging. The space is dominated by two giants, Nestl\u00e9\u2019s Boost and Abbott\u2019s Ensure, that hold long-term contracts with hospital systems and sell roughly the same high-margin formulas they always have. The result is a product people are ashamed to be seen with. In the early days, Haghani stood in stores watching shoppers grab these shakes, tuck them under an arm, and hurry to the register.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s stigmatized. It\u2019s embarrassing. There\u2019s a lot of shame associated with these products,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Story Continues <\/p>\n
Related: The Entrepreneur\u2019s Guide to Eating for Energy, Not Just Losing Weight<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2018If not me, then who?\u2019<\/strong> <\/p>\nHaghani had no money, no medical background and had never built a company. But she did have a vision and a question she kept asking herself: \u201cIf not me, then who?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Through Harvard, she connected with nutrition researchers at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health to validate the formulas. She tapped contacts from a stint at Erewhon to recruit food scientists, then found an R&D facility in Chicago that specialized in high-protein, ready-to-drink beverages. \u201cI might not have all of the exact skills, but I can assemble a team,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Related: He Ran a Furniture Business for 20 Years. Now He and His Son Are Taking On Smoothie King and Jamba.<\/strong><\/p>\n Grandma knows best<\/strong> <\/p>\nBut perhaps her best resource was Lucille herself. At 92, she is the company\u2019s most relentless product tester, and she does not hold back. She calls about the vanilla, calls about the chocolate and lobbies for the tweaks she wants. One day she phoned from her bridge tournament, where she had been showing the other women her Lucille shake. The problem was that as she sipped it, the logo faced her instead of the table, so her friends saw the barcode and the nutrition panel rather than the name.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t you think that you can change where the pull tab and the straw insert is,\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
Haghani listened, because Lucille is also the customer. She places her own orders on the website. She leaves reviews. She tells her friends about it. The authenticity most brands spend millions trying to manufacture is, for Lucille Health, just family.<\/p>\n
Related: Are You Really Listening to Your Customers?<\/strong><\/p>\n Beyond shakes<\/strong> <\/p>\nAs Lucille Health finds its footing and raises funds, Haghani sees it as more than a shake company. To her, the entire category is stuck in the same old oral supplements, fifteen versions of essentially the same drink, too entrenched to become anything else. That leaves the rest of the aisle wide open. Within a few years she expects shoppers to find a full range of Lucille products where the old shakes used to sit, the Once Upon a Farm of older-adult nutrition rather than its Ensure.<\/p>\n
She points to Japan, where roughly 30% of new products each year are built for older adults, against a small fraction of that in the United States. The gap, to her, is the whole opportunity. The idea is no longer the hard part.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea has almost become a commodity. It\u2019s all about execution now,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
For all the giants in her way, the thing that keeps Haghani certain is the empty space where her competition should be.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen everything, and we\u2019ve never seen this. There\u2019s still no one who is doing it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Let’s turn your idea into a real business. Entrepreneur and doola make forming your LLC easy and affordable. Get started now.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo courtesy of Lucille Health Entrepreneur Media LLC and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[277],"tags":[18,18750,135,19,17,229224,229225,508,2835],"class_list":["post-532720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nutrition","tag-eire","tag-harvard","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lucille-health","tag-medical-background","tag-nutrition","tag-older-adults"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116740683672535146","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/6f5388833df22d4c763860c23ff26758.jpeg\")
Photo courtesy of Lucille Health <\/p>\n