Founder Feature: The First Better-For-You Nutrition Company for Older Adults with Jess Haghani of Lucille

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1:16She says that her 90s are the happiest decade she's ever had, which is incredible. But when she was going through her recovery, I was really just shocked to see that doctors were, quote unquote, quote, recommending these legacy products that you take one look at them and it's like, how is this what we're giving somebody who has lived this extremely rich life? She's recovering. She needs the best that's out there, not only because she's lived almost till 90, but she is just going through a really hard time. And we know the power of better and cleaner ingredients and their ability to help the body make recovery.

1:49Like we literally have made those advancements in science. And for some reason, you know, hospital food hasn't really caught up with that. And I think the kind of light bulb moment was seeing that retail and general consumer also hasn't caught up with that. And then spending a lot more time on the category and realizing that no one's doing this, but somebody has to because it's super important that we give the same amount of care, respect, innovation, dignity to such an important part of our population. and how I see it is like older adults have created so much of the world and how we experience it today.

2:26Hey everybody, this is Caitlin Berker, Managing Editor at Startup CPG. We are back with another founder feature. Today I'm sitting down with Jess Hagani, founder of Lucille, the first Better For You nutrition company specifically designed for older adults and named after her 92-year-old grandmother. Jess started her career in senior housing and went to Harvard Business School where she partnered with nutritionists at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. She completely reformulated nutrition shakes from scratch. We're diving into what inspired her to blow up the entire category, how she's approaching taste as the leading indicator for success, why she centered older adult influencers as the main event rather than the exception, and her retail strategy for next year.

3:09Plus, she shares what it's like raising capital as a newly launched brand and why the status quo in senior nutrition simply isn't good enough anymore. As somebody who's really interested in end of life and aging populations, this is absolutely interesting to me. And I feel like this is a brand that everyone needs to be watching. You will quickly see them everywhere. We hear from founders on this podcast every week. If you're a brand and want to get new opportunities right in your inbox, text CPG to 833-605-7002. That's 833-605-7002. And we'll get you hooked up. As always, enjoy.

3:55Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Caitlin. And today I'm here with Jess Hagani, founder of Lucille. Jess, welcome to the show. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks so Thank you so much for having me. Super excited to be here. I am thrilled about your brand. I am nowhere near being a senior, but when I saw that there was a brand shaking up the senior nutrition space, I was floored. I was so excited about this. Might seem like uncommon for people our age to be so excited about something like this, but you are doing something very special. So can you tell our listeners what Lucille is?

4:31Yes, absolutely. And very much so appreciate that excitement. I feel the same every day. But Lucille is named after my 92 year old grandmother. She's my only living grandparent. And we are the first Better For You nutrition company specifically focused on older adults. So we are designed to bring better nutrition, better ingredients, better packaging and like physical experience and just a much more joyful brand to our older adults that make up about 20 percent of our population and extremely fast growing. Well, there's going to be so much to dissect in this episode. Before we dive into everything, I do have to shout out Tasted and Tested because that's where I discovered your brand.

5:10They made a LinkedIn post and I was like, whoa, how have I not heard about this brand yet? You hadn't launched yet, but I am so thankful that they put you on my radar because I am so excited to see you grow. I feel like your future is extremely bright and lucrative, if I do say so myself. Yeah, I remember you found us just coming out of stealth mode and preparing for launch and have so appreciated all of your engagement and everything you've done to support us thus far. So thank you very much. Well, thank you. I mean, you're creating an excellent product. You sent me samples. I tried them. I shared one with my mom.

5:45She absolutely loved it. And then you were kind enough to send samples to my dad, who's currently in recovery from being in the hospital. It's like unfortunate, but very grateful for the extra support from you. So thanks again for that. He sent me the nicest email actually this morning. It was so, so sweet. So that's exactly the sort of connection that we're hoping to make and thrilled that we were able to support him and give him something better. Oh, thank you. I mean, you and I both know hospital food and the things that are available to us post hospitalization and just aging in general, activities wise, food wise, nutrition wise, aren't always that great.

6:22So what was the moment for you where you decided I need to do something about this? Definitely. It was really a series of moments. So I guess my quick background is I started my career in senior housing, which was actually an extremely helpful. I didn't really know it at the time, but very helpful to, you know, what we're building at Lucille because I really saw firsthand how as you age, the built environment around you changes to your, you know, your body changes, potentially your physical ability changes. And with that change comes different adjustments in the built environment and also other ways you interact with products and services that really opened my eyes to this big shift that happens as we get older.

7:02That's just a totally normal part of life. And I didn't really know it at the time, but I think that has kind of been that was a truly formative part of my career to what we're doing at Lucille. And I think there's always kind of been a through line of taking that approach to how we're building the business and just understanding our products and our roadmap, not only from just an ingredient perspective and like just making the formulas better, but really how can we touch other parts of lifestyle that really takes into account our changing bodies as we age? And that comes in many, many different forms.

7:36But that's kind of where I started. And then what was kind of happening to my grandmother was just naturally going on in my family. And she's our only living grandparent. So just incredibly special person to us and very much so at the core of our family. And she was going through some atrial fibrillation in her late 80s. Now she's 92. She's absolutely killing it. She lives by herself in New Jersey. She day trades. She exercises. She plays bridge. She has more friends than I do. She's really amazing and like very emblematic of what this beautiful stage of her life is. She says that her 90s are the happiest decade she's ever had, which is incredible.

8:12But when she was going through her recovery, I was really just shocked to see that doctors were quote unquote recommending these legacy products that you take one look at them. And it's like, how is this what we're giving somebody who has lived this extremely rich life? She's recovering. She needs the best that's out there. Not only because she's lived almost till 90, but she is just going through a really hard time. And we know the power of better and cleaner ingredients and their ability to help the body make recovery. Like we literally have made those advancements in science. And for some reason, you know, hospital food hasn't really caught up with that.

8:48And I think the kind of light bulb moment was seeing that retail and general consumer also hasn't caught up with that. Because when we moved her home and got her out of the hospital and back home, we were going to different stores trying to find all the innovation that we see in every single other grocery aisle. Like, where was it in adult nutrition and who was kind of owning that category? And that light bulb moment was going to every store possible and seeing that it just looks like the hospital shelf. It's just the two main legacy players that have been around since the 1970s and 1980s that have just not made enough meaningful innovation to meet consumers where they are today and for this part of our demographic.

9:27So it was a combination of those things and then spending a lot more time on the category and realizing that no one's doing this, but somebody has to because it's super important that we give the same amount of care, respect, innovation, dignity to such an important part of our population. And how I see it is like older adults have created so much of the world and how we experience it today. And like, how are we innovating more for cats and dogs and other pets than we are for the elderly? Like, I think we're lagging pet innovation by like 10 to 15 years. And it's be amazing to see the innovation on like the other end of the age spectrum for baby.

10:06And I think there's so many similar learnings to take from all of that and apply it to this other very important part of our demographic on the other end of the age spectrum. Absolutely. I mean, I am a mom of a toddler and I see innovation in the baby category every single day. But I also have aging parents and aging in-laws and I think about them daily. What is life going to look like for them in the next, you know, you would like to think 5, 10, 20 years, but it could be sooner than that because things happen. And to be able to set the aging people in our lives up for success, nutrition is absolutely a major part of that.

10:46Recovery, just health in general. So to see you innovating in this category was just eye-opening for me because I spend a lot of time focusing on and educating myself in end of life. And being able to see that people aren't forgetting about the aging population was just so inspiring to me because it does in many ways feel like a population that does get forgotten about. Yeah, no, definitely. And I think what's so interesting is that today's hot word is longevity. And that's what everybody is focused on, extending their years, both in terms of lifespan and healthspan. It's like, OK, well, what is the infrastructure set up for this longevity movement once everybody continues?

11:25Lifespan is at an all-time high right now, but we don't have the same innovation and products available to support that stage. And that is probably going to only increase over time with everything happening with longevity, which is why I think that there's such an impetus to do this now. And I actually think that we're late to the game and we're the first mover here. So absolutely agree with everything that you're saying. How does Lucille feel about all this? She's so excited. She definitely was skeptical at first. I think that she just comes from a more traditional background and not being as familiar with entrepreneurship and the risk associated with that and the difficulties and challenges being a challenger brand against really large players in the space.

12:12But I think that she has really seen us carve our lane and get so much more comfortable with our determination and our broader mission to bring better nutrition to older adults. So now she's fully on board. She is super excited. She was obviously extremely helpful during all of the formula iterations and actually getting the product to where it is today. And then beyond that, all of the ways she's contributed to our brand from letting us trademark her name, which she had to sign off on, and taking inspiration from her love of gardening to inspire many different parts of the brand, how you see it today.

12:48And obviously our hero campaign video we did in her house and part two of the photo shoot for our original assets we did with her and a couple of her friends. So she is really excited. And I think that her involvement in the brand is always just going to be at the absolute core of it, just given this is really why it all started and how it started. I also have to comment on the fact that your brand is the first time I have ever seen senior influencers coming out and representing a product that they truly care about. We are so bombarded with wellness items, skincare items. And again, it's a population that's forgotten about as if aging people are not moisturizing their skin or wearing lipstick or lip balm or using shampoo and conditioner.

13:35So to see your brand recruiting all of these aging influencers was just incredible to me. So tell me what that looked like, how you went about this. What was the experience like from your perspective working with this population? Yeah, definitely. It's been so much fun since launching about two and a half months ago. And that was kind of always the core part of our launch experience and kind of ongoing marketing efforts. And so I would say that there's brands out there, especially in beauty, actually, that have tapped here or there into older adult consumers like Merit has done that. Paula's Choice has done that a little bit and they've created, you know, really fantastic campaigns around a few older adult women in particular.

14:20But I think what's so exciting about us is like that's not the exception. That's the main event, like the point of all the influencers that we're really focused on. And of course, we have other pillars of like caregivers and grandchildren that are working on some basis with their grandparents and things like that. But we are really focused on elevating the voice of the older adult and the end consumer themselves. that when we started digging into this category of influencers, like there's actually so many of them and so many of them have a really spiky point of view and some sort of entertaining factor and heartwarming content and things that we all crave and want to watch and being able to partner them up with a product that they deeply believe in and deeply see the need and value of has been really rewarding and exciting, especially as we think about, you know, some of these as longer term partnerships as well.

15:11So yeah, I think that we'll hopefully always continue to be a part of our strategy and just always remembering that the older adult themselves is who has gone underserved and bringing them and their story and their wisdom and their set of experiences, which is actually, in my opinion, some of the most interesting content out there because they have lived the richest and fullest and longest lives with the most set of experiences and wisdom to share is something that, yeah, I hope we'll always stay very focused on and a very core part of content for the brand. It's funny that you have mentioned these legacy brands that you are now in a way up against in the market, but you're also talking about the legacies that these people that you're working with now are giving us and will eventually leave behind.

15:56So you are playing a huge part in nurturing those legacies for these people, and it's really cool to witness. Yeah, I think that's such an interesting point you bring up even the hero campaign video that we shot of my grandma last year. Besides all of the excitement that it brought about the brand and we document I don't know if you've seen it, but we documented a day in her life. And it's not really about the product. It's kind of about how she lives her life in like two minutes. and beyond what it did to the brand, we now as an entire family, like her kids, her grandkids, her great grandkids, we have this now forever to look back on and have this like beautiful piece of film that captures her essence so well.

16:36And I think that's a little bit of what we're trying to do with our Wise Words series. And hopefully we'll be able to return to a little bit of the larger scale production like we did for the Hero Campaign video and share that with other families. And we have loads of ideas of how we want to do that. But beyond what that content does for the brand, it's actually just this like incredibly meaningful and special piece of content to have and carry for the rest of your life to share with your family. Because it is all about expression of their life and their knowledge and their wisdom to share and not always just about talking about the product.

17:10Like the brand is so much bigger than that. Totally. And this is a product that just effortlessly fits into these people's lives. So it's like, hey, I might be out gardening. I might be out taking a walk, playing bridge, whatever it may be. But I also have Lucille right next to me and I can just take a sip. It's not something that's a force to incorporate into their lives. And everything you're saying, it is just such a beautiful way to preserve everything that they are offering to us and to their children, grandchildren, etc. It's really cool. I've never seen it done before. So everything that you were doing is just so exciting to me.

17:46Thank you. Yeah, one of our favorite influencers, I would say, is Count called Wise Woman Aging. And she, speaking of activities, is an amazing vintage and thrift shopper. And she used to take the other legacy product to her thrifting outings with her girlfriends. And when she heard about Lucille, she was like, I actually don't want to take that anymore. I'm sleeping Lucille and I'm going to show you guys how I incorporate it into my everyday and how it's actually fueling us through our vintage shopping day where they're literally hunting and finding complete treasures. And she posted a video on it.

18:19You can see it through our account. But that's exactly right. Like people getting up to all sorts of amazing things and having we're not really changing behavior or habit here. It's very normal to be drinking a shake, especially in an eight ounce, which really isn't that big. And so finding these ways to just incorporate it and show people how it fits so smoothly into your everyday life is has been a lot of fun and seeing how different people interpret that. Could you give us a snapshot of, without naming any names, what Lucille has in it versus other products that are on the market? Definitely.

18:53So I guess context for how we approached the formula first, we worked with expert nutritionists at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health while I was at Harvard Business School. And that was extremely instrumental in framing our approach. And basically, the first thing they said to me was, I can't put a single worst ingredient in these existing products. If I try Jess, you actually need to just stop even looking at them as any inspiration and just put them to the side. And so that's what we did. We kind of started totally from scratch. They were like, don't fix this, just start over. And that was our approach, you know, really from the beginning.

19:26And so what that resulted in after a comparison, when we were done, we were just curious to see where we landed. We actually don't have a single ingredient of our 10 core ingredients before the vitamin and mineral premix that overlap with the existing products except for water and salt. So every single other thing had to be changed in some way and come from a different source. And on top of that, we have much better macro and micronutrients in terms of higher calorie, higher protein, higher fiber, less sodium, less sugar, which are kind of the five main important ones. And then from a micronutrient standpoint, leaning into some of the challenges that come with absorption with vitamins and minerals as you age.

20:05And so much more focus on the B vitamins, for example. But in terms of specific ingredients, you can find all the information on our website. But just to go through a couple of sources, so we're lactose-free using a high-quality milk protein isolate. So that's higher quality than milk protein concentrate. Our fat source is from avocado oil. We use no refined sugars or sugar alcohol, so have a pretty low glycemic index coming from date syrup and agave syrup. And so that has kind of been our approach to the formula, like using as many real whole ingredients as we can and like truly departing from this older age of what the status quo was for whatever reason and just completely elevating the standard.

20:51And as I think about continuing to iterate on this product and make it better, as well as future product lines, there's so many different things for us to tap and do that are important to focus on from a nutrition standpoint as you age. So we're really excited to continue exploring. But then I guess one other layer on top of all the formulation is that the leading indicator for us was taste. It was taste and to reduce chalkiness. So overall sensation as you're consuming the product, especially as you finish it, like what does it feel as an aftertaste? Because we could have created the healthiest product possible, but if it tasted bad, we were not succeeding at our job at giving people better nutrition because they wouldn't want to drink it.

21:28So taste was always the leading factor and kind of no surprise as we changed a lot of these, you know, less, we changed a lot of these less high quality ingredients from the existing products taste to no surprise to me improved and just became a lot more real tasting in terms of chocolate and vanilla. And even you could actually smell the difference if you just did a side by side comparison. So smell, taste, texture, that was very, very important to us. And then you layer on the ingredients as well. And, you know, we think the bar has been raised tremendously. My mom used to drink a lot of these legacy shakes and products.

22:05I have no better way to say how she describes how they smell and sometimes taste depending on where she's getting them from, even just the same brand. I'm going to say it's probably going to produce quite the reaction for some people, but she says that it's sometimes, well, that it always smells like and sometimes tastes like a baby whose drink formula and then puked. That's what it tastes and smells like. Honestly, my friends who's a doctor had a similar description of it when she tried. I asked her to do a side-by-side blind taste test and she described it in a very similar way as well. So that's hysterical, but there's no eloquent way to describe it.

22:48But the difference with Lucio is honestly amazing. I know it's meant for a senior population, but I would a thousand percent keep these in my purse or like pop these in a cooler. And I think the fact that you are also leading with that it's high calorie is phenomenal because so much focus in a market is about low calorie when it's like, but we have to eat. So yeah, no, definitely. I think that a lot of the other protein shakes on the market, just for like the general people, is trying to minimize the amount of calories for the maximum amount of protein. And as you said, we're not shy about our caloric intake.

23:24And it's really like a one to one ratio of milliliters to calories. Like it's about 230, 240 to 237 milliliter drink. So that's like pretty spot on. But we don't shy away from that. It's actually like a leading factor of front and center on our packaging as well. also really interesting point that you bring up that it's actually like a differentiator for us versus a lot of these other shakes that is trying to be as low calorie as possible. I'm interested in your retail strategy. I know you've talked about working with caregivers on housing facilities. When it comes to retail, are you double facing when you're in store?

24:01Because it is a shelf stable product, but it tastes great chilled, of course. How do you go about merchandising. What does that look like? Yeah, definitely. So we haven't entered retail yet. So we just launched about two months ago. It's absolutely on the roadmap. It's happening next year. It's very front and center for us. We're not actually on the shelves. We've been very focused on e-commerce right now on Amazon and our direct-to-consumer website. But these are all sort of questions that we're talking about with our retailers. And I think that a ton of discovery is happening in both of those places sold as like a single pack grab and go in like a refrigerated section because these tastes definitely taste better chilled and it's just like more refreshing and enjoyable and it has a bit more like a milkshake consistency that tastes better cold but it also still tastes good like shelf stable or at ambient temperature and thinking about a little bit of a larger pack size than just a one-off in the fridge is where it gets quite interesting next to some of the legacy products on the shelf in older adult nutrition or the name, depending on where you are.

25:03But I think that the older adult nutrition aisle is our primary focus. And that aisle kind of attracts the caregiver who is predominantly female and predominantly the eldest daughter of a family. But it also attracts the older adult themselves who's making decisions for themselves and actually able to pick up both products at the same time and do their own comparison and their own study on what they prefer. And so having them next to each other, I think creates a really interesting dynamic where there's a bit more showing the consumer that there's now a choice that they can make. And there is something that has been improved in many different ways that is now available as an option to them.

25:44Whereas if it's a one-off, there's not that exact comparison of and like specification of who we are for and why we are in that exact area. I would love to be a fly on the wall watching somebody going to purchase a legacy product and then seeing Lucille next to them. I would love to see the reactions of people. So if you need to create content in the future, please, I'll be the first in line to watch it. It's been super interesting observing customer behavior inside of stores. And again, like not on the retail shelves yet, but spending a lot of time in stores trying to understand behavior and dynamics.