Name: Chrissy Teigen on Building 'Cravings' Brand and Navigating Partnerships
Uploaded: 2026-06-23T17:46:00Z
Duration: 16 min 34 s
Description: Model and entrepreneur Chrissy Teigen talks about her transition from writing cookbooks to managing a physical retail brand with products on over 3,000 shelves. Teigen also details the launch of Kismet, a new pet brand created with her husband, John Legend, and shares her perspective on what makes a successful corporate brand partnership

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Model and entrepreneur Chrissy Teigen talks about her transition from writing cookbooks to managing a physical retail brand with products on over 3,000 shelves. Teigen also details the launch of Kismet, a new pet brand created with her husband, John Legend, and shares her perspective on what makes a successful corporate brand partnership Photo: WSJ Leadership Institute

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Model and entrepreneur Chrissy Teigen talks about her transition from writing cookbooks to managing a physical retail brand with products on over 3,000 shelves. Teigen also details the launch of Kismet, a new pet brand created with her husband, John Legend, and shares her perspective on what makes a successful corporate brand partnership

Chrissy Teigen on Building 'Cravings' Brand and Navigating Partnerships

You've done a lot of things that very few public figures have managed to pull out. You've turned a massive digital community into physical retail powerhouse from a bestselling cookbook to a nationwide brand that's sitting on over 3,000 shelves, including Target, which is not a small feat. I would say, you're an entrepreneur and author and the founder of "Cravings." So the one and only Chrissy Teigen.

Hi guys. I love Lions. Can I just tell you, we've been coming here for so many years now, and it's always nice to be able to come and have a purpose, so thanks for having me.

Well, we're glad to have...

It's just tinkering around, so it's nice.

Yes. We all like a good job.

I'm with you. I'm with you.

So you started "Cravings" as a cookbook title, but now it's a very big food and product company. There's a big difference between writing recipes and then learning to love managing a physical business. At what point did you realize, okay, this is maybe not just a personal project? I'm actually running a retail company.

Oh my God. I'd say after my third cookbook, I was like, I'm kind of chock out of family recipes, to be honest with you. And if I were gonna do another cookbook, it would have to be a gimmick. And I've never really been into gimmicks or trends or anything. So I remember going to like my following and saying, "What are you guys looking for? Are you looking for quick recipes, diet recipes, this, that?" And then I started realizing that my passion in writing, like I had done that, I had a lot of fun doing the cookbooks, but it's almost like my first cookbook was my baby. The second one, you're like, okay, what are the other recipes we make at home? The third, you're just, for me, I was like, what else haven't I shared that other people need? Like, are we gonna a veggie, lasagna something? So I was just looking to please the masses. But cookbooks started to feel further and further from who I truly am. And it started to feel further from my family the more I did them. Not to mention like I would spend so much money on photography and recipe testing that I like barely broke even with any of them. So I've always been interested in the retail side of things. It's been really fun for me. I grew up working in fashion, literally working at clothing stores, and I loved going to trade shows, and I loved working trade shows, and I loved selling jeans and like being out with people. And I think the more we explored the grocery world, the more it became really fun for me. I was like, dude, like I get pumped to go to like Austin and go to Whole Foods, and I get excited to go to Arizona and meet with Sprouts. I just really had a lot of fun doing it. I love taking those meetings. I love going to the food expos. I love going to Ohio to do like their Kroger food, the like extravaganza they have out on the streets. I just really missed being around people. And so when we went, we transitioned into baking mixes, it became really... it just my life became so much more fun and full. Writing was like, I love writing, I really wanna get back to writing. But not in the sense of a cookbook. It's like not... I just have done it already, but it just became such a fun world to tap into, and like there's just something so cool about a grocery store or a Target shelf, and I love the competitiveness of it 'cause there's only so much space, and I'm fascinated. I'm a big supporter of other brands and businesses, and I can go, and I can spend hours in a Target. We just had a shoot in a Target, and we just spent hours after the shoot just going up and down every aisle, seeing what's new, seeing what's hot. And it's just so cool to me. I love, I honestly love the world that I'm in. I wish I were making billions of dollars from it. I am not yet. But I love it.

Well, I was gonna say you're definitely a people person, and I can relate to the idea of walking an aisle. There's not a store that I don't like walking up and down the aisles. It's abundance of curiosity. But what's interesting is that you started on this food journey with a personal blog. It wasn't actually a cookbook. You just started blogging. You wanted to have something that was your own. And so now that it's become this bigger business, how are you keeping it like personal?

More personal?

And also use some recipes that I would think would be hard to sell in, you know, for big corporations. So we should talk about...

I know, I know. It's really true. Yeah, the blog was called "So Delicious." I had started it on... John and I were living in New York in the East Village, and I kind of felt a little bit empty. I was doing like "Sports Illustrated," and I was kind of the... now that I look back, I cringe a bit 'cause I was like the model that was like, "I love hamburgers, I love eating." And that's like so cringey to me now and lame.

But wait, why is that cringey? Because maybe that's what you actually like.

It really was, but it sounds so like, ugh. Like you get to do whatever you want. You get to have it all. It was like... but John was touring, and I was home a lot, and I wanted to bring something to our relationship that was natural. I'd grown up cooking with my mom. My mom is very Thai, always in the kitchen. She's literally cooking with my toddlers at home as we speak. And I just like always knew that I loved doing it. But what I loved more about it was I had a WordPress blog, and I remember, you guys remember MySpace, since you were kinda like into coding. 'Cause like I consider myself a coder 'cause I could like change the background and like, I knew how to like do like certain things to like personalize that. So I brought that to WordPress, and then it was one of those places where like, it was just such a community, and it was so warm and friendly and fun. And then that turned to Twitter, and then Twitter turned to X, and then I left that. And then I just basically, I'm kind of like just reaching people through Instagram. I know TikTok's like the hot thing, but like, I'm not good if there's too many platforms; I gotta focus on one. So I just really love the community that I've built on Instagram, and I have a lot of fun with it.

So let's go back to some of the recipes that may be harder to sell in that you actually do a marvelous job at getting people to shelf.

Well, Lord, it's hard because I have lots of big dreams. When we started "Cravings," I wanted to be like a Martha Stewart. I wanted to have everything. And you realize you get like investor meetings and stuff, they're like, "You can't be everything to everyone." You're like, "Yes I can. Yes I can." And then you're doing nothing, and it's like you're making a little bit here and a little bit there. And we had robes. I think I had like a face gem phase. There were a lot of things happening on our website because I just loved bringing people into our home and using the things that we were really using. Baking mixes was an accident, honestly. I wanted to get in the world. I wanted to do savory. I'm a big savory food girl. I wanted to bring back Shake 'n Bake in like a modern way. I wanted to take over like a totally different aisle. But the pancakes and the banana bread was really the star; the banana bread like ended up going viral on Twitter. So it became our baby. We started with the banana bread, and then from there people really started trusting us and falling in love with the taste. And now it's all about getting people to try it for the first time and then falling in love with it because it really is so special and unique, and the reviews are amazing. Like people love it. But yeah, it was definitely an accident to go into baking.

So you're here actually to talk about a new phase 'cause that was really your baby. I know you tried the recipes out on your family, and John was along for the journey, but it was yours. Now you're actually going into business officially together. You're launching a company called Loved01 and a pet brand. What made you decide to go in? I now work with my husband, so I have a little view into this.

I will say John is the easiest... has anyone met John? Is he not like the easiest human on the planet to work with? He is by nature. I mean he worked at Boston Consulting. He comes from a background of business and marketing, and he's got such a natural talent with it. Like I've always wanted him in on my meetings. I never wanted it to seem like a creepy relationship that we had where like he was my manager or something. But he's just, honestly, he's so smart, and he's so well versed in things. Like I didn't go to school; I didn't go to college at all. I'm the most insecure person in a board meeting. I'm like constantly Googling acronyms and things that people are saying, and I'm just like, oh. I don't know that; I don't know what this is at all. But Loved01 has really been like such a beautiful endeavor for us and the family. There is traffic out there. I will tell you...

No, I thought that they were like saying they loved the bread.

Yeah! Thank you. I agree. No, but Loved01 has been fun 'cause it's like everything that we do has our whole family involved, and we look at it as like this is our baby, and it's just like another side. Like I honestly really love the idea that my daughter is gonna one day like hopefully work for "Cravings." Like, you know, and my kids have such a passion for cooking, and I hope they have that like, fiery business sense too. And the passion to just learn as you go. 'Cause I will say like every single person that I meet at something like this, like, I'm just like so open to always absorbing what they're able to teach me. And it's really fun.

You're also somebody who's radically transparent. I mean, you've put out your messy parts, and I think that's part of the authenticity of your brand. Did you ever hesitate about doing that?

No. No. If anything, now I hesitate to do it.

Well, why now?

I don't know. I feel like a lot of people have lost like their sense of like context clues or reading. I'm sure you guys know more than anybody. People just sometimes go into reading what you're saying as you... it's just... they never think you are saying what you mean. They twist it. It's like very hard. And I'm an explainer, so if I say something, I mean what I just said, and if you don't understand that, then I'm the kind of person that wants that one annoying troll to understand it. And that's been really hard for me to turn off because I love being understood. And you can't do that in this world. People are gonna take things the wrong way. People are gonna twist your words. But yeah, I kind of learned as I went along. Like probably like sharing IVF stuff was my first intro into, "Oh, people are crazy." Like, I didn't know that was a hot topic.

Do you read all the comments?

Not as much as I used to. My muted words list, you guys, oh my God. One time I went through and read my muted words, and that was a gut punch.

Oh, that's never good. Never good.

I know. So yeah, I have a social team, and they go through and they mute words. So I don't honestly see a ton of things. But yeah, I grew up on the internet, so I'm so used to seeing what people think about me in real time. So that's a hard thing to switch off. But now I'm better. I still read it, but I'm better at being like, "Oh, that person's crazy." That's gotten better.

Well, there's lots of crazy. But let's go back. I'm gonna do a final question because we're in between...

That's it?

Well, we could keep going, but we're like between them and...

I flew out here for this. Keep going.

We're just keep going. You know, I wanna go back to working with your husband, and I know everybody said, "Oh, John is super easy," but let's be honest, working with your spouse means you have no boundaries. And maybe we have no boundaries because you're describing sort of being radically transparent in a way that maybe said I didn't have a ton of boundaries, which I might relate to that weirdly. But I think that's...

Such a good point. I don't have any boundaries.

Well, because...

I haven't ever.

You know, my husband's like, "You wake up, you work, you go to bed, you work, like you only wanna talk about work." Right? We know what that's like. So it has to be a complicating factor, even if he is easygoing.

Well, he's so robotic. People have this image of John as like, when he writes a love song, he's going in the studio, he is lighting candles, he is thinking about me, and it's like all this like beautiful process. No, he's like, "I gotta go to the studio at one. I'm gonna write a song." It's very formulaic. It's everything's laid down, and it's a job. And I think that's, for me, it's not like that. Every job is my life. I'm very ingrained in it. And so I think that balance of the two different people that we are is what makes it work really well. And what's fun about Kismet, our dog food company, is that everything we do is so light and fun. Like sometimes I can't believe, like I make cookies and I make cakes and I make people happy, and they bring these to baby showers, and they have a great time, and they're sending me photos making this stuff. Like, what a cool job to be able to like, be in people's kitchens with something indulgent and sweet and beautiful. And then with the dog food, like we have a lot of animals in our house. It was natural to want to let people in on that part of the life too and to get into that industry. But still like with the same partners, like we are in Target, and it's just been really fun. And working with John on it is fun because he sucks at social media. Like I never see his posts; honestly, my algorithm doesn't even feed it to me. But it's like fun to be able to help him on that side. And then he helps me with the things that I don't excel at.

Okay, so before we close, I have one final question for you. You have a lot of marketers, creators who work with people like you...

You guys are the smart ones. Help me.

Okay, well we're all gonna say no, we're not gonna let you make yourself small. That's not how we roll.

That's very kind.

Well, it's just not necessary. So I'm like, what was my question? So anyway, what would you like people in this room to know in terms of what makes for a great partner from your perspective?

Oh, I love an honest relationship. I love a lot of transparency and honesty. I'll just give a quick example. My father passed away a couple weeks ago, and the day that he passed away, I was supposed to do a post for Pizza Hut. I don't know, you said you told me this, you were like, "This is on the record.

I'm here let's go.

And I was like, I'm not gonna say anything I can't say; I don't even know if I was supposed to say that, anyway. And we filmed this like funny Pizza Hut video, and I supposed to throw it up, and you know, everything changed so quickly. Oh, Kim is here, is that okay to say? It's fine. I love pizza. So I was supposed to post that day, and then Kim was texting me. She's like, "Hey, we gotta do this post." And I was like, "Hey, my dad just died." I'm sorry to laugh, but like, you have to laugh so I don't sob.

Well, it's the way to get through the message.

Exactly, exactly.

That's fine, we understand.

So when I get to work with brands, what I love is like the relationship I have with brands that have been going for a long time like that, and like to be able to have transparency and honesty with people like that. We were able to say like, "Hey, this just happened. I know it would be a bad look for you to see a post back-to-back with my dad and then a Pizza Hut post right after. I know that's weird." And then there's so like the kindness and empathy is when they see you as a person is important to me. I like working with good people. I think I'm lucky enough to be in that position because before I wasn't; you had to work to make money and support yourself. So I couldn't really be picky. But it's been really like so beautiful and such a treat throughout my career to see that, to see like these brands who are like, you know, they're funny on social media, they do this, that, they do different things for attention, and I love seeing like the heart behind them too. And I love seeing the teams behind them, and I always like getting like close with them, and like, that's personally what I look for is some kind of warmth and family like.

So I'm gonna say we're gonna finish off with, we're gonna make each other bigger, kindness, and radical transparency.

Woo!

Thank you so much for joining. Thank you. Thanks, guys.