Big change coming to Aussie Ikea stores

Fake meat meatballs. You can almost hear the shrieks in Stockholm.

Scores of Aussie Ikea shoppers, desperate for a new Billy bookcase or Lack table, swerve by the restaurant to recharge with a plate of ground beef and pork with a side of mash and lingonberry sauce.

Yet since the furniture giant introduced no-meat vegan balls a little more than six months ago they’ve become a surprise seller with almost a million sold in Australia.

One in 10 Australian Ikea meatball munchers now opt for the fake meat variety over the real meatballs.

Chuffed by their success, Ikea has said it is well on the way to another big change in its restaurants. By 2025 it says it will have 50 per cent of all its meals in its Australian restaurants “plant based”. You could be swapping out salmon for salad.

It’s a very visible sign of an environmental push by the furniture firm which says it wants people to live more sustainably in “our one shared home – the planet”. The company has claimed the balls have just 4 per cent of the climate footprint of their more meaty kin.

A senior Ikea Australia manager has said the firm is keen to avoid any accusations of greenwashing but has conceded there is still “lots to do” if the company is to hit its goal of producing net zero emissions by 2030.

One million plant balls devoured by Australians

In October, Ikea introduced its “Huvudroll” range of so-called “plant balls”. Made with pea protein, oats, potatoes, onion and apple, they’re spruiked as having “the taste, texture and juicy bite of a meatball”.

And quite a number of shoppers appear to agree. Ikea has said that since October it has sold 870,000 plant balls at its Australian in store restaurants. That figure would be a way over a million if you include the frozen variety you can pick up on the way out for $6 a pack.

“I tried them and I like them a lot actually. I have a pack in my freezer now,” Ikea Australia sustainability manager Melissa Hamilton told news.com.au.

“I make my own sauce: yoghurt, lemon, black pepper and dill and a little bit of fresh milk which complements them.

“The plant balls allow us to offer more choice to customers and they taste the same as meat balls which is fantastic. Considering they only launched last October they’ve been really well received,” she said.

Ikea’s plant balls are part of a huge trend in vegan fake meat options. Beyond Meat, the creator of the Beyond Burger, has a market capitalisation of $US8.75 billion ($A11.5 billion). In Australia, fast food outlets from Hungry Jack’s to Mad Mex. now have plant-based meat options, which they claim closely mimic meat.

People assume fake meat is healthier than the real thing – that’s often not the case. But the environmental impact of meat is significant.

The production of beef in particular is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Around 14 per cent of worldwide emissions come from the meat and dairy industry, chiefly through methane from animals.

Along with the half of in all Ikea in-store meals being plant-based by the middle of the decade, 80 per cent of the menu will involve choices with no red meat.

RELATED: Mad Mex. and Guzman Y Gomez in vegan stoush

Nine out of 10 Aussies want companies to be greener

In its 2021 sustainability report, Ikea has highlighted its restaurant as a small, but noticeable, example of its eco goals.

These also included its buy back service which has led 18,000 unwanted and expired coffee tables, bookshelves and other furniture odds and ends to find their way back to a store to be repurposed or recycled.

The firm has installed electric car charging stations at three stores; will have an all-electric vehicle fleet by 2025 and its Adelaide store will be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy by the same date.

Ikea has a goal for net zero emissions from its operations, similar to many companies and indeed countries, with its deadline 2030. (Notably the Australian Government has not set a date for a nationwide net zero goal.)

“It’s less than nine years,” Ms Hamilton remarked. “There’s lots to do – time is of the essence.”

A survey of 1000 Australians by Ikea found 93 per cent said they were already taking action to reduce climate change, mostly by sorting waste, using fewer plastic bags or consuming less energy. However 92 per cent thought businesses could do more to reduce emissions.

“Consumers have been demanding this for some time,” Ms Hamilton said.

“But we’re not doing this just for consumers. We actually do believe this is the way to do business in the future.”

RELATED: Net zero emissions explained

‘Fear of greenwashing’

Ikea has had a few eco hiccups along the way.

In 2019, it opened its “most sustainable store” in Greenwich, southeast London. The only problem was one of Britain’s most sustainable supermarkets was demolished to build the sustainable store – leading some to question just how sustainable the new Ikea really was.

The same year, Jesper Brodin, the chief executive of Ingka Holding, the Dutch company that owns most Ikea stores including those in Australia, acknowledged it was too easy for firms to fall into the trap of “greenwashing”.

That is where companies overstate their environmental credentials when, in reality, much less is happening.

He told the Financial Times: “We are still having internal debates over the fear of greenwashing.”

And there’s often been the sniping from some that Ikea would have less of an environmental footprint if people didn’t dump their furniture so often or it wasn’t shipped to Australia from so far afield.

Ms Hamilton said the company was committed to reducing emissions in transport. She added that it was transitioning from a “linear” business – where it makes products, sells them to customers and worries no more – to a “circular” business of which the buy back program was an example, where products are returned when they were no longer needed.

“Our journey hasn’t been easy … but if people were to say greenwashing, I’d say we’re sure that we’re going to hit [our goals] on time.

“We have the ambition, we have the plan and everyone’s committed to the plan.”

And if you were looking for another hint as to how that future plan might manifest itself, it’s right there in the restaurant too.

It’s a plant-derived no-cream strawberry ice cream, or strictly speaking a “sorbet”, flavoured with strawberry which, Ikea insisted, “has the same soft texture as the original dairy offering”.

The only thing it’s missing is the emissions in making real cream.

Just the thing to follow up a hearty dish of plant balls.