Here's Why This 90 Day Fiance Side Business Is Turning Heads
Pedro and Chantel Jimeno are one of the most beloved yet controversial couples ever to grace 90 Day Fiancé. They met on Facebook through Chantel's former Spanish teacher, who encouraged her to make contact with Pedro in order to practice the language, as per their TLC bio. They soon fell in love, Pedro proposed, and before long, he'd moved from the Dominican Republic to the United States so they could be together. There were issues with Chantel's family, however, because the couple initially hid their engagement — leading to accusations that Chantel was just being used.
These two have continued to prove their haters wrong, of course, establishing a united front that even bagged them their own special, Pedro and Chantel: The Full Story, followed by a full-on spinoff show, The Family Chantel. Meanwhile, Chantel's mother (colloquially known as "Mama Chantel") scored her own Facebook Watch digital advice show in October 2020, simply because she's so popular with fans.
Clearly, these 90 Day Fiancé stars know how to generate interest and profit in equal measure, but Pedro and Chantel's latest business venture still has many surprised.
90 Day Fiance's Chantel and Pedro are officially a brand
As In Touch reported at the time, Pedro and Chantel Jimeno officially became business partners on April 23, 2019 — just a couple weeks after The Family Chantel was announced — with the launch of their registered company, Pedro & Chantel LLC. At the time of this writing, no further information has been shared about the purpose of the couple's corporate entity. However, it's worth noting that the business move happened in spite of their marriage supposedly being on the rocks — or so it seemed to be, at least, on 90 Day Fiancé at the time.
In a press release for their spin-off, President and General Manager of TLC Howard Lee noted, "Our fans can't get enough of Pedro, Chantel and their larger-than-life families." It's entirely possible, then, that the couple wanted to further profit from that attention. But we're guessing that Chantel's parents might not have been completely on board, considering their previous assumptions, upon initially meeting Pedro, that he was using Chantel to obtain his U.S. citizenship. Per Newsweek, they warned Chantel that Pedro — who admitted during Season 3 that he had started his own business back home — allegedly just wanted to move stateside to work, so he could "harvest the American dollar" and funnel all the money to his family in the Dominican Republic.
But clearly, Pedro and Chantel are in it for the long haul — so combining their business interests simply seems to be their next logical step.