With #CravingsFest, Chrissy Teigen Is Expanding Her Relatable Brand Into the Experiential

The room was packed: Lines extended from every food station, crowds gathered around small high-top tables scattered throughout the room. And if you looked closer, you’d start to see signs of why so many people were there. Not just for the food, or the photo opportunities, but because of the person whose name was attached to the event: Chrissy Teigen.

Mini-skewers topped with tiny photos of her face stuck out from sandwiches and drinks. A life-size photo of Teigen with her husband, EGOT-winning musician John Legend, and daughter Luna had Luna’s face cut out, so guests could pose as if they were Teigen and Legend’s 2-year-old. At the front of the room, there were shelves holding products from Teigen’s newly launched line of kitchenwares at Target. And at the back, there was a stage featuring a backdrop that read CravingsFest! in a cursive scrawl with Teigen’s name printed underneath.

Chrissy Teigen and John Legend at CravingsFest.

In a world where (thanks in large part to Instagram) celebrities are more accessible than ever, Teigen has still managed to make a name for herself for being relatable. Though she started her career as a model, best known for appearing on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, she’s long since expanded beyond that role: She’s a television host of the smash hit series Lip Sync Battle, a sought-after celebrity spokesperson, a must-follow Twitter personality and of course, the author of two cookbooks: Cravings, and the newly released Cravings: Hungry for More.

CravingsFest, which was hosted as part of this fall’s New York City Food and Wine Festival, is one of Teigen’s first ventures into the experiential. Her willingness to interact with fans, particularly on social media, was a major catalyst for the event. “I’ve always felt the entire Cravings brand should be interactive, whether it was the ability for people to ask me cooking questions on Twitter or people sending me photos of their meals on Instagram,” said Teigen. “I always loved being able to connect with fans in every way possible. CravingsFest was just that: bringing those same people I already love interacting with, all in one place.”

Guests at CravingsFest sample Teigen's recipes.

Bryan Icenhower, president of IMG LIVE, part of Endeavor Global Marketing, who put on the event, said that as Teigen’s cookbook was half recipes and half an inside look at her life, doing an event like CravingsFest was a natural way to pull back the curtain on Teigen even more. “Bringing it to life is not something all celebs could do, and she was able to do it with ease just by being herself,” he said.

The event was deeply personal, too: Icenhower said that Teigen was involved in nearly every aspect of designing the event, from the decor to the menu to the programming—which included a cooking demonstration with Teigen, Legend and her mom, Vilailuck Teigen, that Chrissy Teigen called “hysterical and so perfectly us.”

“She spends a lot of time in the kitchen, she cooks with her family, and all of the recipes are very deeply personal to her,” Icenhower added. “That made for an event [in which] she could tell the stories, you could taste all of the recipes, you can connect with her on a much more personal level, to really bring it all together in an experience you couldn’t do otherwise.”

John Legend, Chrissy Teigen and Vilailuck Teigen on stage during the cooking demonstration.

It also was a successful launching pad for the next phase of the Cravings brand, said Icenhower. Fans could see Teigen’s new kitchenwares line from Target, and shop it on iPads conveniently located next to the product display. They’d get to try the recipes they’d be able to create if they purchased the Cravings: Hungry for More book.

But for Teigen, the event wasn’t just a way to expand the Cravings brand, but a way to show her appreciation for her fans. With that, making it affordable was important to her—general admission tickets cost $50, while a $125 VIP ticket got you a photo opportunity with Teigen. “I wanted people to really feel like they stepped into my world,” she said. “It was a thank you to all the wonderful people who have been on this journey with me, some for eight long years on the Twitter, some for even longer on my very first blog. It was really a room full of love and friends, eating our way through the book.”

Of course, not all of Teigen’s fans are located in the New York area, and Icenhower said they’ve already received hundreds of requests to bring CravingsFest to other cities. This one event is only the beginning.

“To make her recipes in your kitchen is one thing, but spending the afternoon in the kitchen with her, cooking, eating, posing, it’s a whole other thing,” he said. “We saw the power of that and we clearly want to continue to leverage that uniqueness that is Chrissy.”

Teigen said CravingsFest was "bringing those same people I already love interacting with, all in one place."