Kevin C.
Yelp
I came here early on a Monday afternoon just to browse and see if the cafe upstairs was open. Parking in the large parking structure was plentiful. In fact, most of the customers parked in the parking lot outside, so the parking structure had this desolate, lifeless and empty feel. Parking in the parking garage allowed me to park close to the lower store entrances and find my car quickly upon exiting. I took the large elevator from the parking level to the store's first floor; the elevator was so large that it was easy to socially distance from others (if there were actually others to socially distance from).
Exited from the elevator and headed to the escalator leading up to the second floor. At the base of the escalator was an employee available to answer questions from lost customers, and hand sanitizer and wipes were available for customers. While I was still on the escalator, my stomach decided to take the lead, so I immediately headed to the cafe with the single goal of getting the meatballs meal for lunch.
The cafe dining area is huge and spacious, and it looks even bigger now that a lot of tables were removed, making social distancing easy while still allowing a lot of customers to eat in there at the same time. The cafe is still cafeteria style, where customers stand in a line (customers are responsible for social distancing) after taking a tray, and select their own plastic covered desserts, contained/sealed drinks, then tell the employee at the hot food serving line what entree/meal they'd like to be served. The employees are very quick and efficient, and did a great job getting customers through the serving line and to the register quickly. Plexiglass barriers, face masks and gloves shield the food employees and the employee staffing the cash register from customers. The employee at the cash register provides packets containing plastic utensils, a napkin and salt and pepper packets while accepting your payment. I hadn't had the Swedish meatballs meal, which included 8 small meatballs, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli and lingonberry sauce. It was very inexpensive and filling, and tasted good, and I even got $2 more knocked off from the cost of the meal since I'm a "Ikea Family" member. Ikea does a fantastic job with cleaning in the cafe area. The cleaning ladies wipe down all of the tables and chairs after customers are done using them, and, as a visual to let everyone know where the clean tables are, they either tip the chairs forward (resting them on the table), or pick up the chairs with arms and rest the chairs onto the tables by the arms of the chairs. Nice system there! I enjoyed my food while taking in the nice sights of the surrounding area and the sunlight flooding through the clear floor to ceiling windows.
With a content stomach, I took my time browsing through the maize of showrooms on both levels of this huge warehouse store, although I was looking more for bedroom and entryway furniture and things for the kitchen. Walking through the furniture areas reminded me that most of the stuff sold here are "Monets," things that look great from far away but the flaws start showing more and more the closer you get to them. I saw so many pieces of furniture that looked great, but realized how cheaply made they were once I got my hands on them and took a really close look. There were a few reasonably priced high quality pieces of furniture that would last longer than a year, but most of the items looked like they wouldn't last very long under normal wear and tear. The overwhelming majority of the showroom furniture displayed tags that stated that they were temporarily out of stock. After noticing this trend, I stopped looking for furniture. Houseware items looked a lot more long lasting at inexpensive prices. In the end, though, I didn't find anything that I really needed at this time.
Throughout the store, I noticed that many of the showroom shelves on the first floor (where customers can pull merchandise from) looked very sparsely stocked, and many items didn't have the one price tag displaying the price in that area. There were also incorrect tags (incorrect item name or description), so I'm sure that will cause a lot of confusion and disappointment.
All employees wore face masks. Most customers wore face masks. Many employees could be found throughout the store, but I noticed that none of them proactively asked customers if they needed any assistance. Customers can move their vehicles to the loading zone if they need to load large items into their cars/trucks.
Overall, though, Ikea provides inexpensive prices for mostly cheaply made items. Most of the time you will get what you pay for, so buyer beware.