03: Self-Assembly Ingredients: The Magic of IKEA’s Swedish Food Market

Before you depart the store with your fraught relationship just-about-in-tow, dip your head into a souk of Swedish ingredients

To some, it’s a nightmare whilst awake. To others, a fantasy land. Whether homeowner or renter, it might be for a couple of plates or napkins, or investing in a brand new sofa or shelving unit — which you’ll no doubt screw the assembly of. Over time we’ve all had reason, excuse and, for some, even the desire to visit IKEA. It has transformed the ways our homes have operated over the decades, and indeed how we operate within our homes. But IKEA is more than just moveable furniture and quirky names, and a trip to IKEA is a multi-faceted experience, with food experiences and an insight and understanding of Swedish culture embedded into the visit.

Whether you make a whole meal of it and a plate laden with meatballs is your first port of call or you just grab a hot dog as you’re walking out, IKEA and food go hand-in-hand. Though a design company at its core, the mission was always to democratise good design, applying practical, useful, thoughtful and affordable design to everyday items to make the whole home function better. You don’t need us to trot out the ol’ cliché of the kitchen being the “heart of the home” here. Sure, the in-store dining thing is a little bit of a gimmick, but for so many people it’s a necessary and oft-mandatory aspect of the store experience. If meandering from showroom and marketplace through to warehouse and checkout feels like a marathon, you’re going to need sustenance, if even just a fika (for the uninitiated, the Swedish social pause during the day to enjoy a hot drink and something sweet) for the caffeine hit and sugar surge. Like the company’s design ethos, the IKEA Restaurant seems to follow the same approach, which we’re taking a vast liberty to paraphrase in our own, unofficial words as: ‘delicious, filling food at an affordable price, offering something for everyone’. Like their functional, useful and keenly-priced self-assembly items, it’s not the BEST quality and not life-changing but certainly a novel addition to the experience, satisfactorily sating the appetite like good organisational design does for storage needs.