Brace Yourself For Ikea Stand-Alone Restaurants
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How can you not like Ikea? In between shopping for a bed for your new apartment and some house plants, you’ve probably taken a much-needed break at the affordable no-frills cafe inside the world’s largest furniture retailer. Because of Ikea’s surprisingly food-driven revenue, the company is now considering expanding its business to include stand-alone cafés in city centers. So far, Ikea has tested pop-up restaurants in London, Paris and Oslo, and they hope to bring them to Australia next.
The food at Ikea is simple and inexpensive with almost everything $5 and under. People can’t seem to get enough of the Swedish meatballs with creamy gravy and lingonberry jam. Fast Company reports “30% of Ikea Food’s customers are coming to the stores just to eat.” The food department of this massive furniture retailer has grown to be its most rapidly growing division with “annual sales of about $1.5 billion in 2013.” Aside from the in-store restaurant, Ikea has a Swedish Food Market where you can buy all sorts of cool ingredients and DIY versions of the restaurant’s most popular dishes.
Ikea has made it a point to ethically source their ingredients and incorporate healthy options into the menu. They have become so committed to ethically sourcing, that they are now considered a major global purveyor of certified-sustainable seafood, with direct connections to farmers in Norway.
Founded in Sweden in 1958, Ikea has somehow cornered the market of cheap furniture and cheap food, all rolled into one, and we’re not complaining. Especially when you can feed your entire family for just about the price of a cocktail. Who would have thought to drive furniture sales with Swedish meatballs? The laid-back cafe with Scandinavian staples is the perfect incentive for shopping. Gerd Diewald, the man who runs Ikea’s food operations in the U.S., told Fast Company, “It’s hard to do business with hungry customers.”
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