
Ikea's restaurants were failing. Then it turned to Swedish meatballs
CNN
Ikea is known for sprawling showrooms, cheap flat-pack furniture and, of course, Swedish meatballs.
The retail giant sells more than a billion of its trademark Swedish meatballs at cafeterias in stores every year. The meatballs have become a symbol of Ikea's friendly Scandinavian brand image and central to the retailer's strategy of keeping customers browsing inside stores for hours — and getting them to pick up a new bed or couch after they finish eating.
Meatballs are "the best sofa-seller," Gerd Diewald, who led Ikea's US food operations at the time, said in a 2017 interview.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio rolled out the first stage of a major plan to reorganize the US State Department on Tuesday with changes that will eliminate 132 domestic offices, cut around 700 positions in Washington, DC and close offices focused on war crimes and global conflict, according to a senior State Department official and documents obtained by CNN.