This IKEA Vending Machine Stocks Kitchen Gadgets

For its latest move, IKEA is thinking inside the box. The Swedish retailer has set up a vending machine at a Stockholm subway station, and nope, there’s not a meatball in sight.

Instead, the machine at Hötorget station carries small kitchen items like a garlic press, an egg slicer, and other tools. While it’s fully functional (which is important during those garlic press emergencies), the vending machine is basically an ad for the retailer’s kitchen pop up store nearby that opened on September 1 and will run for about six months.

The temporary location is about 400 square meters (4300 square feet) and includes a showroom with seven display kitchens “for different life situations,” according to a press release from IKEA Sweden.

“We want to offer customers the opportunity to plan their kitchen with our kitchen specialists while they can see, squeeze and know everything from slots, countertops and cranes to knobs and handles. We already have hundreds of booked times and now also offer booked times from quarter past seven in the morning to meet the great interest that appears, “says store manager Karima Kinana.

The vending machine, which will be up for a few weeks, encourages people to “get a kitchen to go with their garlic press”.

“We want to show in a playful way that Ikea is available wherever (our customers are), not only in our department stores,” Miki Tabakovic, deputy country sales director for Ikea Sweden told Market.se, as reported by Business Insider.

The company also turned a ferry into an ad, encouraging patrons to “ride the ferry to the kitchen.”