IKEA Betting Big on its Food Business

As far as back in 1959, when IKEA opened its first store in south Sweden, Founder Ingvar Kamprad, realised it was difficult to do business with hungry customers. His observation is valid even today…

- Charu Lamba, Henrik Österström, IKEA India Food Head

Swedish furniture major IKEA, which is opening its 400,000 sq.ft debut outlet in India on August 9, 2018 features 7,500 furniture and home furnishing products and a 1,000-seater restaurant which is the brand’s largest in over 400 stores it has globally.

Henrik Österström, Country Food Head, IKEA India says, “IKEA aims to create a better everyday life for the people. It is with this vision that we created our home furnishing business idea, which is to offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them. But then, you may ask why do we also serve food? The reason for our association with food goes back quite some time. As far back as in 1959, when we opened the first store in a small village in south Sweden, our founder  Ingvar Kamprad had said that it is difficult to do business with hungry customers. His observation is valid even today when we have huge showrooms in various markets across the world.”

He further adds, “Back at that time, our founder realised that people used to leave the store after shopping for some time. They did not come back because they went out to eat something. So, the idea was born that we need to have our own restaurant to keep the people in the store and to give them something nice to eat.”

IKEA Food represents 5-6 percent of IKEA business totally. The brand has 390 restaurants all over the world and sell food to approximately 650 million customers every year.