Ikea offers pop-up café with ‘breakfast in bed’

Sticking with immersive and sensory retail design this week, you may remember last month we told you how Swedish furniture retailer Ikea were going to be trialling a new range of smaller stores, starting with a new outlet in a retail park in Norwich, which is due to open in the autumn. Well it seems they couldn’t wait to get started as news reached us that they had opened a pop-up café serving breakfast in bed right in the heart of East London’s trendy Shoreditch a couple of months ago.

The popup was situated in Leonard Street – just a few streets away from another flourishing breakfast store – the Cereal Killer Café, which we reported on last year. Like that eaterie, the new Ikea café offered something unique: as visitors were invited to take a 40 minute nap in an Ikea double bed whilst being offered a free snack – as part of a promotion for the Swedish retailer’s ‘Breakfast in bed’ theme.

The food on offer included some favourite staples from Ikea’s café range along with other traditional Swedish fare, such as waffles and Gravadlax (smoked salmon and dill sauce). In addition to this, visitors were also given advice from Ikea bed department staff on the best way to get a good night’s sleep.

Sadly, after getting our pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers on and heading down to Shoreditch, we were dismayed to discover that unfortunately we found about this pop-up too late – such is the fleeting encounter of this kind of marketing exercise – so we missed out on some delicious waffles and a kip. I guess we’ll just have to wait for the new small format Ikea store in Norwich to open instead. Roll on autumn!