

Food takes centre stage in Ikea India’s growth strategy
At an Ikea store in India, a shopper’s journey often ends where it quietly begins again—with a tray of food.“Food is a major driver of traffic for us. It’s among the biggest reasons customers walk into our stores,” Adosh Sharma, country commercial manager at Ikea India, told Mint in an interview.What started as an in-store convenience has evolved into a core lever for footfall, repeat visits and customer engagement.
Now, Ikea wants to scale its F&B (food and beverage) offerings further, sharpening focus on footfall-led growth and store productivity, Sharma said.Part of this approach is to anchor visits around routine and family engagement. “It starts with kids’ meals—we run ‘Happy Wednesdays’ where children come in and get a soft toy,” Sharma said.Menus are localized to reflect Indian preferences.
“We’ve created an eclectic mix of Indian and Swedish food. We realized early on that retailers simply cannot come in with the assumption that they know everything the Indian customers want,” he added.The Swedish giant now plans to deepen this localization as it scales its food offerings across cities, tailoring menus to regional tastes to drive repeat visits.The scale of this shift is already visible.
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