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Has anyone been to an ikea restaurant recently? I think post-covid they made a bunch of cost-cutting changes, because I remember the food being pretty darn deli
by kart23 4y ago
Has anyone been to an ikea restaurant recently? I think post-covid they made a bunch of cost-cutting changes, because I remember the food being pretty darn delightful and tasty. I went a month ago and got cold mashed potatoes, disgusting veggies, and just plain horrible mac-n-cheese. Also, all the silverware and dishes had been replaced by single-use wooden sporks and paper plates.
I'm probably never eating at ikea again. The meatballs are decent, but you can get them frozen and they taste exactly the same.
- Hamuko 4y agoHow are wooden sporks and paper plates cost-cutting? They're single use, so you need to keep buying them, whereas you can wash silverware and dishes. And they're probably the cheapest possible silverware and dishes known to man since IKEA makes them. Sounds more like a hygiene thing than a cost-cutting thing.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- luciusdomitius 4y agoIKEA doesn't make anything. Their entire competetive advantage is inventing logistics 2.0
- nicoburns 4y agoIKEA is well-known for it's innovative designs. They're just focussed on cost-saving for the most part.
- hef19898 4y agoIf you are in logistics, and concerned with engineering for packaging, you have to analyze IKEA. They are among the very best at that.
- luciusdomitius 4y agoThey are not among the very best, they literally invented it and still hold the steering wheel.
- Saint_Genet 4y agoThat's like saying Apple doesn't make iPhones.
- bobthepanda 4y agoWashing does require some amount of labor and water usage. We don’t get sodas in reusable bottles to return either for that reason.
- simongray 4y agoWe actually had that in Denmark prior to the turn of century... and basically only that or glass bottles for beverages, as cans were also banned. Now it's just like in other countries.
- Symbiote 4y agoBars often have returnable bottles for soda, and I occasionally see the same bottles at supermarkets. (Irma near me has Schweppes in glass bottles.) Maybe people don't like to carry the heavy bottles around.
- bzzzt 4y agoAlso, all that glass adds substantially to the shipping weight. (almost half a kg per bottle, adds a lot of weight to a truckload of soda)
- simongray 4y agoI was talking about reusable plastic bottles, though, which were washed and refilled in a similar way to glass bottles in Denmark. This was still the case in the 1990s, but it stopped at the turn of the century.
- llampx 4y agoThe energy to product these single-use utensils costs less than what a dishwasher person would cost with the current labor shortages, I suppose.
- luciusdomitius 4y agoIt is not just IKEA. Besides shrinkflation, there must be something like shitficflation, because here in C. Europe, mince and sausages became basically inedible over the past 12 years. Which is a shame as I used to enjoy both.
- RC_ITR 4y agoThis is going to feel like a personal attack, but it's intended to be commiserating: Welcome to getting old.
- SllX 4y agoIs that why eating out isn’t as much fun as it used to be either?
- acchow 4y agoYes. It also becomes increasingly expensive to find enjoyable/delightful food.
- mantas 4y agoWhy do I feel young again at a tiny butcher shop then? Same old good sausages as always. Although for a much higher price...
- luciusdomitius 4y agoTo be honest, I really took that into account. For example this crap fat (known by everyone) momma-pizza's taste has deteriorated from 8 to 6. High quality single-malt's taste has deteriorated from 7 to 5, while mince and sausages have seen such an insane drop, that they are literally no longer edible (so <3). In my childhood I'd rate them 7 or 8. But yeah, feelings get blunt with age, not only the feelings of pleasure, but also the feelings of suffering. That's why it is much easier to run 42km at age 35 when it is literally 3 times much more difficult than at age 25..
- radicalbyte 4y agoI legit prefer the veggie meats to supermarket burgers/mince.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kemayo 4y agoI last ate at an IKEA about a week ago. It was as-expected, on regular porcelain plates with metal utensils. The mashed potatoes were hot, but I didn't have their normal veggie mix or mac-n-cheese -- I always get the "veggie medallion" substituted in from their salmon plate. I suppose that the most we can draw from our mutual experiences is that different IKEA restaurants are running at very different levels of quality right now. Hopefully yours was just having a bad day. (To be fair, most cafeteria-style mac-n-cheese is disgusting. Or I just have weirdly high standards for this specific food.)
- prawn 4y agoCould it be a staffing issue? In Australia, the service industry is scrambling to fill shifts as COVID hits harder post-restrictions. A restaurant might shut or offer limited service because they can't offer a level of service that would escape bad reviews damaging them for the future. A friend told me about dishwashers at one place here getting $85/hour because they were so desperate. I'm guessing this was Sunday rates, but still. Using recyclable plates/cutlery might help cover for that temporarily.
- jillesvangurp 4y agoThe whole point of the Ikea restaurant is that they are show casing a lot of their own products in there: the cutlery, plates, tables, glasses, chairs, tables, etc. are all stuff that they sell in the store as well. I think they have some variations between countries in what they offer exactly in terms of food. So, greasy/bland diner style food is what you get in the US mainly because that is what people would expect to get in a place like that in the US. Likewise, the German Ikea has some German things (I've been there). I do wonder what they would do in a place like Italy. They tend to be super picky there. Serving mac and cheese there would probably get the chef lynched.
- belter 4y agoIf you violate Italian food etiquette you won't survive. I would rather tell Kim Jong-un he is fat. "Restaurant Refuses to Grate Cheese for Customer's Seafood Dish, Calls it an 'Obscene Request" https://www.vice.com/en/article/wjvdxz/restaurant-refuses-to-grate-cheese-for-customers-seafood-dish-calls-it-an-obscene-request https://www.vice.com/en/article/wjvdxz/restaurant-refuses-to...
- EnKopVand 4y agoWe recently moved, and as is tradition here in Denmark, we ended up buying most of our big living room “look at my furniture and judge me” stuff at cool “styley” places and then the rest (and a meatball dinner) at IKEA. I haven’t been to IKEA since I lived in a dormitory that was close to IKEA two decades ago, where the meatballs and soda-refill made for a good hangover stop, but the plate I had two weeks ago was exactly like I remembered it to be. Not great, not terrible. I was sad that they don’t do soda refill anymore though.
- CitizenTen 4y agoSaw you're at UCSD? I'm at UCSD. Want to meet up? citizenten@tuta.io