Ikea Promotes Food Products by Offering Fill-in-the-Blanks Recipe Sheets

There are few places you can buy a sofa and sit down to a traditional Scandinavian dinner, but Ikea is one of those unique retail environments. In an effort to promote the company’s food business, Ikea recently launched a set of recipes printed on parchment paper that encourage consumers to “fill-in-the-blanks” with ingredients, fold the paper and cook the bag in the oven.

The promotional campaign – dubbed “Cook This Page” – was dreamed up by Canadian advertising agency Leo Burnett. It was featured during Ikea’s Kitchen Event in Canada, and the recipe sheets are not available for purchase in stores.

The parchment recipes feature a number of food products sold at Ikea, including frozen salmon filets and their famous Swedish meatballs. Edible ink circles representing spices and other ingredients are drawn to scale to make measuring spoons unnecessary.

Customers who might be intimidated by trying a new recipe are encouraged to place all of the ingredients on the parchment in their designated spots, fold the paper and bake in the oven. A take on the classic French en papillote way of cooking, the food steams in the bag for a simple meal with easy cleanup.

In 2016, Ikea brought in around $36.5 billion in global sales with $1.8 billion coming from the Ikea Food department, according to Fast Company. It’s no wonder then that the company is using the promotional parchment recipe sheets to connect their kitchen furniture and food marketplace divisions.

At Ikea, you can build your pantry and stock it with food.

The time is right for this kind of product: increasingly busy consumers are looking for meal kits and grocery deliveries to take the guesswork out of preparing a meal at home. Food giant Nestle recently announced they would be making a major investment in ready meals manufacturer Freshly.

While a Huffington Post article points out that Ikea isn’t the first to come up with parchment paper-based recipes, the flat-pack furniture company is certainly taking a unique approach to the cooking technique.