Breakfast in IKEA

Monday 15th October

There we were, a small crowd of early ‘Ikea’s’, huddled round the locked entrance as the wind whipped around the under-store car park.  Dead on ten the doors opened.  We knew exactly what we were looking for, a fairly slim stand-alone kitchen cupboard, and after a couple of tries found exactly what we had in mind.  We noted down the Aisle and Location numbers and wandered through beds and carpets and bathrooms and on to the restaurant.  The store was still not taking money until 11, so we were going to have a coffee.  What we hadn’t realised was that almost everyone else had headed straight to the restaurant and were all munching away.  Maybe as a lost leader, maybe as an attraction in itself Ikea has a great self-service restaurant, even if they do insist on a few Scandinavian delicacies such as lingenberry juice and I kid you not, ‘Organic Moose Pasta’.   It is incredibly cheap and well made; six breakfast items for less than two pounds is almost a steal.  So we too had our breakfast, the coffee was re-fillable too, and for less than six pounds we had a great start to the day.

What we didn’t fully realise was just how many people had come simply for the breakfast. They weren’t buying anything at all, and of course there was nothing to stop you doing just that, though one hopes that some of Ikea’s other goods such as furniture and housewares may have crept into their consciousness. But there is a recession on, and you would be hard-pressed to manage a breakfast quite as good at home at that price.  We continued through an almost deserted store, through the market hall and into the collection hangar, found our bit of furniture exactly where it should be, loaded it on our trolley, paid and came home.

We had suddenly discovered a new institution, Breakfast at Ikea, and if we lived nearer we might manage it every Sunday.

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