Nina's Blog - Friday 6th December 2024

@Coralmist Yes between 10:00 and 11:00 this particular IKEA serves three different dishes for breakfast. The simplest is just a roll and a slice of cheese, the one I usually have is a wholemeal roll, butter, two slices of cheese, two of ham, a sliced boiled egg, a piece of lettuce and a slice of red pepper. The biggest is a sort of impression of a Full English. Here's my breakfast from 23rd November:
Including the coffee it costs 44 NOK, that's just under 4 USD

But I don't think they do breakfast at all IKEA stores and if they do then there will be some variation in what the sell. The one I have is a fairly ordinary Norwegian style breakfast or lunch. In fact it is a little fancier than most people would provide for themselves.

@ninalanyon Wow it looks really good! Are you in the US?

@ninalanyon I just realized you are not in the US. That is an awesome price!! That would be more like 6 or 7 dollars here.

@Coralmist You have to take into account differing income levels though. US median after tax household income is 69 240 USD (2023, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-government-just-revealed-median-154500486.html?guccounter=1) whereas median household income after tax in Norway is 590 400 NOK (2022, https://www.ssb.no/inntekt-og-forbruk/inntekt-og-formue/statistikk/inntekts-og-formuesstatistikk-for-husholdninger)

So as a fraction of income my 44 nok is 0.0075% of annual income whereas your 6 or 7 USD would be 0.0087% to 0.010% of annual income.

Goodness me! But according to the exchange rate at 4 USD it should be 0.0058% of annual income.

I wonder if anyone on SW has been to a US IKEA and could tell us if they serve breakfast? And if so what and at what price?

@Coralmist I looked up IKEA in the US and the do do breakfast although, as expected, it is different. The annoying thing is that they don't have any prices for the meals. This what you get for breakfast in the US:
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/stores/restaurant/?itm_campaign=LSP&itm_element=STORE_RESTUARANT-Button-&itm_content=RESTAURANT-MENU

@ninalanyon I just saw your calculations now. Very interesting. I do wonder the prices now too for breakfast!

@Coralmist I've just asked ChatGPT

And got this response:

If we can believe ChatGPT it looks like you get more calories for your money in the US

@ninalanyon Oh cool..ty!! I think here in MA it would be more, but you never know! Prices in southern U.S. are a bit less. Those are awesome prices, so I need to check it out and finally go there!

@Coralmist I chose the Charlotte IKEA out of nostalgia as NC is the state I've visited most often.

It would be interesting to hear what a US IKEA is like. In Europe they vary somewhat from place to place. I'm lucky in that the nearest one to me is very quiet because of the way the building is designed and the space divided up. But the IKEAs in England have a totally different architecture and the restaurants are noisy uncomfortable places.

I have the Noise Capture app on my mobile. Here's the summary for IKEA Slependen in Norway.

And here is the one for IKEA Reading, UK

Admittedly the UK IKEA was much busier but IKEA Slependen never gets that noisy even when it is packed with people. Much of the difference is down to the design of the space. IKEA Slependen has relatively low ceilings and the seating area is divided into four separate 'rooms' with partitions whereas the UK one is a huge undivided space with very high ceiling.

Of course it's not all IKEA's fault, British children make a lot more noise than Norwegian children and British parents respond equally noisily.

@ninalanyon The sound app is quite interesting, didn't even know it existed! I would love to see NC one day🙂I bet the noise level in my state would be somewhere in the middle of the English store and Norwegian one.

@Coralmist The sound app is available on the Noise-Planet website: https://noise-planet.org/noisecapture.html