It’s Kismet: John Legend and Chrissy Teigen Launch a Lifestyle Pets Brand

“Poop!” Chrissy Teigen and John Legend shout in unison in a recent interview. The Hollywood power couple, who adopted dogs together before they took the leap into raising human children, are spelling out in great detail how pet parenting prepared them for the next stage of their lives together.

“Once you do dog poop, changing diapers is nothing,” Legend says. Teigen adds, “Honestly, it’s the same thing. You have something that needs constant love and attention, and they also get sick and they need you and they depend on you. So for us, having a dog for so many years before [having kids] really prepped us very well. Poop was nothing to us.”

The new addition to the Legend-Teigen fam: a pets brand

Currently, alongside four kids, the pair parent four dogs, each of different ages, shapes, and personalities. They have, in short, put in their 10,000 hours raising pups of a couple species, and, now, they’ve put all of that care into developing Kismet, a pet lifestyle brand that will offer a range of dog foods and treats, as well as pet-themed clothing for humans that includes a crewneck, matching sweatpants and sweatshirts, and a Poodle graphic tee. (There’s also a bandana for your pet.) Kismet launches today, May 1.

“This is our first time co-founding a brand together,” Legend says. “Of course, we support each other’s stuff all the time. I just did a Cravings shoot with Chrissy, and she just did a Loved01 shoot with me. But we love dogs so much. We love pets so much. We love the idea of building a really great pet parent community, and we were like, ‘We should do this together.’” 

(For those readers still catching up on the busy couple’s schedule, Cravings by Chrissy Teigen is the model and influencer’s food brand based around her Cravings cookbook series, and Loved01 is Legend’s luxe skincare brand developed “with melanin-rich skin in mind.”)

The first offering from the brand, which had consultation from Dr. Kwane Stewart, aka “ the Street Vet ” (more on that later) includes two freeze-dried dog food recipes, and “limited-ingredient” treats. The treats come in two flavors and two different shapes each — squares and long sticks. They have what Teigen calls their own “focus group” at home (one of whom — Petey the Poodle — wandered into their room unprompted and nosed a bag of the Kismet treats to the delight of everyone on the call). 

Cherub Puppies Hoodie

$100

$100 at Kismet

“There is no rhyme or reason as to why we got any of these dogs,” Teigen says, laughing. “Really, Chrissy would be on Instagram and see someone like, ‘This dog needs a home.’ And she was like, ‘John, we got to get him.’”

“They’d be like, ‘Help amplify this dog and blah, blah, blah.’ And I’d be like, ‘I can take it.’ So yeah, it’s a real hodgepodge of animals in our house,” Teigen chimes in. A hodgepodge that has helped with taste-testing: “The long dogs like the square treats and the square dogs like the long treats,” Teigen says. 

Chicken & Barley Recipe With Nutritious Freeze-Dried Nugs

$32

$32 at Kismet

Bringing in a top dog in the vet world

Although the brand was developed with a team of pet nutritionists, Kismet landed a star in the vet world for the role of chief veterinary officer on their brand: the Street Vet. The couple reached out to Dr. Stewart after he won the 2023 CNN Hero of the Year Award, a well-deserved recognition for his years of work administering veterinary care to the pets of unhoused people. He started this work in his home of San Diego and now has teams in eight different cities.

“I am a veterinarian now for 26 years,” Dr. Stewart tells us. “I, as I say, have kept my powder dry when it comes to getting in bed with anybody that’s in the pet food arena. But we got to talking, and we were just aligned on so many things, and yes, I have the sort of body of work, the experience, but they have the heart, the passion. Their pets are their family, too, but let’s not ignore [that] they have the influence and the reach. So, you combine that with some of my vision and what we want to do, and it just seemed like a really perfect match.”

Portait of a Dane Crewneck Sweatshirt

$100

This item is already sold out (no shock!), but keep checking back for a restock!

$100 at Kismet

The pet food market was, according to one market research firm, a $103.3 billion market in 2023, and is expected to grow. To set themselves apart, Teigen and Legend are excited about dialing in the brand for families who live in cities. They’re planning meet-ups at dog parks as well as launching an online community. Dr. Stewart also adds that while they aren’t “reinventing the wheel” when it comes to the actual dog food, the brand “fine-tunes” certain areas, like the ingredient profile. 

“It starts with real protein,” he says. “Animal protein is the number-one ingredient,” he says, adding that they have a “tried and true” extrusion process that is shelf stable, which is important to him as a vet — especially one who treats so many with unhoused parents.

Mission: Give back to pets in need

Dr. Stewart’s nonprofit, Project Street Vet, will be one of the beneficiaries of the philanthropic arm of the brand, Kismet Cares. Dr. Stewart has one wish for this partnership: to keep his dog food pantries stocked.

Kismet Salmon & Brown Rice Recipe With Nutritious Freeze-Dried Nugs

$35

$35 at Kismet

“Obviously, I’m dealing with a population of pets that don’t have consistent nutrition, right?” he adds. “I will see these pet parents give their only meal of the day to their pet. Sometimes, they’re eating off the ground or they’re scrounging on the streets. I’ve been observing this for years, and I bring food, but it’s never consistent.”

Through his nonprofit, he launched a food pantry in Skid Row and stocked it with dog food available at all times for anyone to grab and go. One pantry location can go through up to 800 pounds of dog food in a week, he says, and he’s hopeful that with the help of Kismet, he can expand the food pantries and keep them full. 

The Poodle T-Shirt

$55

$55 at Kismet

“If we can stock my pantries ... with premium dog food all the time, I mean, that’s a dream,” Dr. Stewart says.

Besides Project Street Vet, Kismet cares will benefit Paws for Life, a nonprofit that Teigen and Legend first encountered after visiting the Lancaster prison outside of Los Angeles. The nonprofit’s prison program matches dogs from high-kill shelters to inmates in the prison, and they then train and socialize the dogs. 

Slow Cooked Salmon Squares

$15

$15 at Kismet

“They need a connection, and sometimes they need mental health work and trauma counseling. Working with dogs actually really helps their own mental health and gives them a really important channel for their energy and their love,” Legend says.

“That’s why the word ‘Kismet’ was so important to us,” Teigen says. “That bond and this meeting between two things were maybe never supposed to have met, but it just happened. It was in the universe for those two things to meet, and it’s beautiful.”

Slow Cooked Beef Sticks

$15

$15 at Kismet

The Kismet range is available for purchase here.