What Swedish furniture retailer is known for flat-pack products and meatballs? IKEA is the Swedish furniture retailer known for both.
Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943 when he was 17, initially running it as a mail-order business. The name is formed from his initials, the family farm Elmtaryd, and Agunnaryd, the village where he grew up. Furniture was added to the business in 1948.
IKEA helped popularize ready-to-assemble furniture, especially after introducing flat-pack sales in the 1950s. Packing products efficiently reduced transport and storage costs, while customers took them home and assembled them themselves. The first IKEA store opened in Älmhult, Sweden, in 1958.
The restaurant became part of the IKEA experience soon afterward. A store café opened in 1958 and expanded into a restaurant in 1960, serving Swedish foods including meatballs, gravy, and lingonberry jam. IKEA is sometimes called a furniture manufacturer, but its global structure includes design, franchising, retail, food, and homeware operations.