Cravings by Chrissy Teigen expanding CPG line

LOS ANGELES — Celebrities often endorse spirits, functional beverages or beauty products — or even found their own — but typically they aren’t developing and testing recipes in their home kitchen and launching branded consumer packaged goods (CPG) products.  

That approach has been successful for cookbook author, television personality and entrepreneur Chrissy Teigen. Her company, Cravings by Chrissy Teigen, was founded in 2021 and has grown from selling cookbooks and cookware to producing a line of boxed baking mixes and pasta sauces now available at more than 3,000 retail outlets and online.

“Cravings started in my kitchen,” Teigen said. “It was never about putting my name on something. It was about sharing the food I actually cook for my family and friends. Seeing it grow from cookbooks to mixes and now sauces in thousands of stores is surreal.”

The baking mixes include banana bread, cookies and pancakes and waffles. The company also offers four different flavors of pasta sauce.

Haley Ludwigson, who joined Cravings as chief financial officer in 2021 and was named chief executive officer in 2024, said both product lines “are doing really well” and that the company is “growing significantly.”

“We feel really good about the baking mixes,” she told Food Business News. “We hear from consumers on social, and they tell us how easy they are and they love it. With the pasta sauces, we’ve gotten the same feedback from consumers.”

Consumers are looking for easy meal solutions that offer something different, are flavorful and “taste like something that took more effort,” Ludwigson said.

The company’s research and development process is to determine how a product may be convenient without sacrificing taste, she said.

“We included everything needed in the mix, and all you have to add is pantry staples,” Ludwigson said.

Providing interesting and flavorful meals for consumers from breakfast and dinner to dessert is also an important goal for Cravings.

“With pasta sauces, we really want to be that solution,” Ludwigson said. “Two are internationally inspired — spicy Thai basil marinara and spicy miso alfredo.”

Besides convenience and taste, price is a key issue for today’s consumers who are anxiously monitoring their food budgets.

“Price is hard, and we are trying to answer that,” she said. “We actually tell our followers when we do our recipes the quantity to use, but each of our pasta sauces makes more than one serving. In my house, we probably make two meals for four people (from one 14-oz jar).”

Cookbooks and cookware synergies

Teigen started her food-related career in 2016 by writing three cookbooks, followed by a line of cookware and then the CPG products. Ludwigson said she views the company as “always being an ecosystem” within which the products fit together.

“They’re all stemming from one place, which is Chrissy and how she cooks things,” she said.

The recipes — either from the founder or the company chef — are posted on the company’s website and social media, Ludwigson said, plus the cookware is regularly featured along with the company’s CPG offerings.

“For example, we have a sheet pan to do desserts from our products,” she said. “We have the braiser — we call it our ‘perfect pan’ — that we use for pasta because it’s like a large Le Creuset for lack of a better term. It’s light and even … and beautiful to leave out, so you can cook in it and serve in it.”

Ludwigson said Teigen takes an active role in the company, including a recent rebrand, and that the product categories were “really intentional” in being tied to the cookbooks and recipes.

The company recently introduced a carrot cake baking mix.

| Photo: Cravings by Chrissy Teigen

Retail expansion

Retail availability of the company’s products began with Bristol Farms, a specialty retailer in California, while the pasta sauces were initially exclusively available at Sprouts Farmers Market outlets, Ludwigson said.

Since then, Kroger has picked up four Cravings products, she said, with a new item — carrot cake — launching on Feb. 26. The new product is a nod to the carrot cake featured at Teigen’s 2013 wedding to musician John Legend.

“We are especially grateful for our loyal consumer base and our supportive retail partners,” Ludwigson said. “In just over two years, we’ve built meaningful distribution in two loved product lines, and we couldn’t have done it without them.”

She said although the Cravings team has talked about products intended for GLP-1 users, the company is comfortable with where it is and doesn’t plan to move into that space soon.

“We do show on labels about portions and making those easier for consumers, ingredient transparency, and put whatever you want with mixes to make protein-forward meals — really balancing the meal out,” she said. “But we have a strong belief that life’s too short to skip the good stuff.”

Cravings recently celebrated its five-year anniversary, and Ludwigson said after taking on a lot quickly in that time, she plans to focus on building the business to incorporate more meal occasions with the company’s CPG products.

“There’s a lot of space in breakfast to later in the day,” she said. “I’m focused on those moments and focused on convenience and joy for families — and to see the growth focused on new products and new flavors.”

Teigen addressed the company’s future this way:

“Over the next few years, I want Cravings to be the brand people reach for when they want something fun, flavorful and foolproof,” she said. “We’re just getting started.”