A trademark of IKEA is not only cheap furniture, but of course also Swedish meatballs, of which it sells about 1 billion every year. These meatballs have become not only a symbol for the Scandinavian brand represented by IKEA, but also the focus of its strategy to keep customers in the store as much as possible, increasing their purchases.
The meatballs were added to the menu long after the opening of the first restaurant in an IKEA store. In fact, no one expected in their debut, in 1985, that they would be so successful. Even suppliers of meatball ingredients were wary. As Sören Hullberg, who oversaw the changes at the time, put it: “Why would a furniture store suddenly buy meatballs and send them around the world?” “I never imagined that 40 years later people would talk to me about it,” he said.
The turning point
IKEA turned to the meatballs, as it had difficulty selling the other traditional Swedish dishes on the menu. According to Hullberg, IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad (from whom the name IKEA was formed, combined with the initials of the farm and the village he grew up in Sweden) considered the chain’s restaurants to be a mess and wanted to upgrade their style and quality.
Kamprad believed that IKEA was losing customers – in the approximately 50 stores it operated around the world at the time – because they were beginning to starve as they wandered the vast expanses. So he imagined the creation of restaurants, where customers could rest, eat and organize their shopping.
Hullberg, then a store manager with a close relationship with Kamprad, undertook to implement the plan, upgrading from the kitchens to the menu and staff training. In collaboration with a team of four, their goal was to create restaurants that would be an extension of the Swedish brand represented by IKEA.
Back then, the average store served up to 5,000 customers a day. In order to simplify the tricks without increasing the cost too much, the menu should be small. And since it would apply in many different countries, it would have to include dishes popular in more than one culture.
Meatballs, a staple of the Swedish diet, met all the criteria. At the same time they were preferred because they can be kept in the freezer, transported easily and prepared quickly in the kitchens. It is worth noting that Kamprad wanted pork to be the main ingredient of the meatballs, although the IKEA chef prepared a recipe with two thirds of beef and one third of pork. In the end, the chef’s recipe was preferred because it was easier to export.
The hunger for shopping
Today, IKEA restaurants offer a wide range of meatballs, from chicken to vegetarian. The dish managed to recover after the intense episode of 2013, when traces of horse meat were found in a batch in Europe. In fact, during the pandemic, IKEA was forced to close its stores and published the recipe, so that one can make them at home.
Restaurants are usually located about in the middle of the store neither too close to the entrance nor close to the exit. In essence, the goal is for the customer to be hungry before buying something at the restaurant, says Alison Jing Xu, an assistant professor of marketing at the Carlson School of Management in Minnesota. According to her research, when one is hungry one spends 64% more money than those who do their shopping with a full stomach.
moneyreview.gr with information from CNN
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