You may not have to trek through endless aisles of furniture and homewares to get your fix of Ikea meatballs in the future.
The Swedish retail gian is looking into stand-alone restaurants, so people craving some Scandinavian dishes don't have to make their way out to the suburbs and past the hoards of flat-pack shoppers.
"The mere fact that we don’t need so many square feet to do a café or a restaurant makes it interesting by itself,” Ikea Food's managing director Michael La Cour tells Fast Company.
“I firmly believe there is potential. I hope in a few years our customers will be saying, ‘Ikea is a great place to eat — and, by the way, they also sell some furniture.’”
However, Ikea Australia says local restaurants aren't on the cards just yet.
A diner tucks into a meal at Ikea. Source: Flickr / Linusblanket17
"While Ikea Australia don't currently have any plans to open stand-alone Ikea restaurants in Australia, we are always looking at ways we can make our food offering more accessible to the many people," the company tells SBS Food.
"Food is an important part of the Ikea business, with our restaurants, bistros and Swedish food markets in Australia serving over 5 million customers each year."
Ikea originally started serving food to keep their customers happy and full while they shopped.
"We’ve always called the meatballs ‘the best sofa-seller', because it’s hard to do business with hungry customers," Gerd Diewald, who runs Ikea’s food operations in the US, tells Fast Company.
But the success of Ikea's food division, which has seen them invest in ethically sourced ingredients and healthier options, now has the company considering branching out into cafes in city centres.
Though food is a small part of Ikea's overall business, which recorded $US36.5 billion ($AUD48.6 billion) in revenue globally last year, Ikea Food's figures are nothing to be sneezed at - 650 million diners a year across 48 countries around the world, adding up to around $US1.8 billion in sales in 2016.
And according to Ikea's figures, 30 per cent of people who eat at the restaurants go just for the food.
Over the past two years, Ikea have set up successful pop-up restaurants in London, Paris and Oslo, so stand-alone restaurants aren't that much of a stretch.
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