IKEA Twin Cities

Who would have thought that the Ikea cafeteria could be so good? Also, why can’t all cafeteria food be like this? Affordable, tasty, and quick. What’s not to love! To stave off the hanger before a day of furniture shopping and building, I highly recommend a meal from Ikea. I had the Veggie ball meal for $ 4.49, a Punsch roll for dessert, and some free coffee with the Ikea Family card. You get 10 veggie balls in the meal, and they are smothered in a delicious sauce. The steamed veggies which accompany the meal are colorful and perfectly cooked. The Punsch roll is an amazing chocolaty, nutty, small, but perfectly fulfilling dessert. For $ 0.49, you can’t NOT get one! Next time I have to stop by Ikea for furniture, I will definitely go to the cafeteria first.

I think almost all of our furniture is now something from IKEA. We love the concept of it, and I think the history is always interesting (go check out their pictured moments in history by the restrooms in the café). It is a huge store, and you should have a game plan before heading in. For the most part, the employees are helpful, but having a superior team of knowledgeable and excited employees would add to the whole experience. I think there is some work to do on that, which is the only reason it did not get a 5 star rating.

The only thing I don’t like about this store is that it’s family friendly. One of the reasons I shop online so much is because I don’t have to deal with other people’s children.
I’ve purchased a few pieces from Ikea and am in the market for a couple more. I love putting together what I buy, though the directions can sometimes be challenging. I’m still trying to decide if having pictures is sufficient to not having English-​language directions. There have been a few pieces where I really couldn’t tell which piece of wood was being featured in the image. I winged it and nothing’s fallen apart thus far.
If you can go during the day when most people don’t have children with them, you’ll be able to breeze through the store easily. Make sure you get a flat bed cart, just in case. They get picked quickly so you probably won’t find one when you need it.
You can sign up for Ikea Family to get discounts and specials sent to you.

Why don’t I like Ikea? Let me count the ways.
1. The store is confusing. It’s a maze, and you feel like you’re a rat caught in a maze. Will you find the cheese and get out, or will you be trapped in the store beyond closing time? That’s my nightmare. At least they have some beds in the store.
2. Their products aren’t well made. We purchased an entire dish set and glassware. That stuff broke within weeks from normal usage. We’ve had similar luck with umbrellas, shelves, and other products we’ve purchased, to the point where we asked ourselves why are we spending money on things that break? Because it’s a trend, that’s why.
3. I guarantee that you’ll be confused about where you parked when you leave the store. You just get too turned around in that place.
4. Lines. After traversing the maze, you’ll be lined up like lemmings as you await your checkout (that is if you buy some of their products that will break once you leave the store).
5. Their cool flat escalator upon exit hasn’t worked since the store first opened. It’s unfortunate. That was one of the most fun features of the place.
Having said that, we are fans of the cafeteria and the Swedish meatballs. You can find some great meal deals here, and the food is surprisingly okay. Don’t expect gourmet; but do expect Swedish cafeteria food. It’s a great place to bring kids for a meal. They can get what they want, you can get what you want, and it won’t break the bank.

ALWAYS long lines and disinterested employees. 13 people in line for returns with only 2 people working. Countless employees wandered by while we all waited. Checkout lines are equally understaffed. Won’t be returning.

This is the first IKEA I’ve been inside. While the home improvement items are definitely neat (not really sure about pricing), the cafeteria was awesome. $ 5 for a great tasting meatball or veggie ball plate? What a deal. Even better when they have a promotion where your meal is free if you purchase $ 100 or more. Makes me really wish there was an IKEA store on Oahu.

Ikea is so big… I had to sit down. Luckily they have a cafeteria for me to collect myself. The meatballs were good and the potatoe cake was surprisingly good. I’m so overwhelmed I don’t know what to look at first…
I’m so glad husband has a place to sit and use free wifi when I’m shopping.

I’m a big fan of this store, we make special trips up to the cities just to shop here. If you have to get things for a dorm room or for your apartment this is where to go. They have acres of housewares and furniture for very affordable prices and the neat thing is its all designed to fit in your car. We bought a futon and several pillows. Their housewares is really nice, and you can’t believe the bargains. There is little or no floor help so you are pretty much on your own. You just grab a big yellow bag and tags and go downstairs and pick up you items from a warehouse like area. Checking out reminds me of Sams club same type of arrangement.

Living 3 ½ hrs away from here I absolutely LOVE Ikea! It becomes difficult when trying to buy bigger items but is awesome for the smaller, decorative items. Meatballs are always a nice snack after the miles of walking you do around the store. Love how EVERYTHING you see can be purchased but hate how confusing it gets when you try to use the shortcuts they built into the route. It also gets kind of difficult when you purchase a lot of items because they don’t have bags at the check out, you have to buy one but they’re awesome bags! Modern styles. Basic and bold colors and patterns. Will definitely be back again for more house hold needs.

Please remove the arrows, IKEA MN!!! We are not children and we do not need to follow the arrows if we don’t want to, ok?
Typical IKEA, cheap stuff with a mix of really expensive stuff. Honestly, what’s the difference?

I feel like this is the adult version of a toy store for anyone who is into DIY home stuff.
My husband has never been here so I took the opportunity to bring him when we visited the Twin Cities area. I jokingly warned him ahead of time that we might leave with an «instant bathroom» as we happen to be working on ours at home.
I navigate us into the parking lot and he is amazed on how big the building is. We take the escalators up to the second floor and I go to reach for a bag. He stops me and says, «oh no, we wont need that. «I laugh and we move on.
We start slow checking out all the different set up and kitchens. I didn’t want him to get overwhelmed. We had arrived right around opening so the flow of people was light.
As we got taken in more and more by looking at different products and how affordable it all was the crowd thickened. Thank goodness for the way this building is designed to keep the flow of people, kids, strollers, carts, moving through a maze of set ups. He was just in awe of how many people were moving through this building.
He started to understand the magnitude of people this place could put through and product that must go out the doors when you reach the end. He thought the pricing was really reasonable which is something I also agreed with him.
We took a lot of pictures and wrote down ideas of what we were starting to think was the answer to our prayers.
We stopped mid way to have lunch, cause of course you have to have the Swedish meatballs while you are in house.
We moved on to finally reach the area of the bathroom set ups that we needed to be in. This is where we burned probably about an hour. Going over all the options and possibilities of the bathroom redo.
Some things we knew we didn’t have to have that day but we did end up getting a new medicine cabinet and vanity.
We also left with a couple IKEA fun things which was probably more than we needed but still fun.
We hauled out our purchases and loaded up the vehicle. Didn’t need a pickup truck but it was close.
Fast forward to a week later when my husband and his brother are putting these together. I had warned them a head of time of the no words instructions but they did really well and no blood was shed! Then Hubby and I put the med cab together with no fights! Yay! — you know they say if you can survive putting together IKEA furniture then your marriage will last forever. lol
Overall the trip was worth it. I have a nice looking set for my bathroom and I am still kicking myself for forgetting to get chocolate as we went out the door. Now I just need to get ahold of idea for one tiny little piece that was missing when we put the cabinet together.
If we lived closer I would be there more often bouncing on the beds and trying out all the cabinets and having more fun. I think that place is more fun than the Mall of America next door.

I freakin’ love IKEA. Great customer service and tons of home décor options at every price point. I’ve had my LACK coffee table for 5 years, tons of moves, and it looks brand new.
Here’s a tip: go to the As-​Is section before you enter the rat race for the best deals. My sister and I found our dream sofa in the As-​Is section after being in the store for about 5 minutes. We splurged for home delivery because we have a small car. It was great! Same day, up the stairs to our apartment for $ 99!

When you need something but don’t want to pay oversaturated prices for it, IKEA! Since I have Swedish blood in me, I try to get to IKEA every now and then to see what is new and get a plate of their classic meatballs. I like to shop around and it seems I always get hungry, probably because you walk for miles in this place…
Now IKEA’s restaurant isn’t necessarily the best Swedish food eatery out there. It is still cafeteria food mind you, but it is pretty good and the price isn’t bad. Actually the food is very good when you think about it, since it is cafeteria style. The serving area is not always the most inviting to grab your food from, but after you get past that and slip into the trendy looking eating area, you kinda forget that you are in a glorified cafeteria. And for crying out loud, it is amazingly cheap so I don’t really mind that they plop my mashed potatoes on a plate with no artsiness. I’m OK with that.
The food is always comfortable and reliable. The Swedish meatballs are a hit, but the ribs, salmon, and pastas are all very good too. Sometimes we will get dessert, but you can find the same stuff in their grocer section for a lot cheaper, so we usually opt out and bring home dessert instead.
The staff are not always the friendliest, but once again cafeteria. All in all, I love IKEA and their quirkiness carries over into their food service. Remember; make sure to mix all the flavors on the Swedish Meatball plate for full effect!

This ikea is much bigger than our branch in San Diego. And although it was huge, there was nothing there we wanted to buy. Nothing. So the majority of this review is mainly for the cafeteria style restaurant upstairs. My sister in law and I got the Swedish meatballs, my mother in law and husband got the chicken tenders. Everything was surprisingly delicious. When I got my meatballs and they were covered in a strange brown gravy I was kind of bummed, but was immediately happy surprised when I tried it. Great! We all got a piece of some chocolate coated cake with a crunchy crust. I don’t know what it was but it was fantastic and I almost got emotional when I finished it and it was over. Honestly the meal was worth stopping in for on its own. I’m not above walking around a furniture store just to get some meatballs.

First off, a furniture store/​warehouse wouldn’t be possible without good service. I went in and was helped by some of the workers in the warehouse and was very satisfied. One in particular went above and beyond with assistance. I believe his name was Alex and his last name may have started with an A. He was in the ‘self service’ department in the warehouse and showed me to my desired items in a very timely, professional manner. That warehouse can be a pain in the behind to navigate in, being so big and all. The gentleman really helped me out, props to him! 5 stars!
IKEA’s food is also fairly good, the meatballs can possibly be avoided but everything else is very well priced and good quality. It’s so fun to be able to shop for furniture and have a hectic time then be able to relax and eat a good meal. ALSO don’t skip the candy downstairs past the check-​out isles, tooo yum! Love this store!
:) :):)

I have been here several times to buy materials for my home. This is a great place to shop for almost anything related to home interior design. It is also great for learning a few Swedish terms.
I love that this place has quite a few floors of selection. This place takes advantage of this large space well. The variety is outstanding. Therefore, there are a ton of home materials from which to choose. Things they have include furniture, kitchen ware, carpet/​rugs, home maintenance, and various materials for every possible room in the house. Therefore, it is almost impossible to walk out of here without finding what I am looking for.
I love that they have various themes in their rooms to give me some ideas of how to arrange my house. The themes I have seen are modern, contemporary, Victorian, funky, to name a few. The individual materials in these rooms have a lot of interesting character that is adorable to look at. I have bought a lot of home décor here, and I have gotten several compliments from friends saying that my house looks fantastic.
I also love that they have a restaurant and a mini grocery store with Swedish food. The food in the restaurant is delicious, and it is a great area to eat a good meal. Most of the food is self-​served, which is convenient for me. The employees appear to have a good eye on freshness and cleanliness. I have never had any problems with either of them. In the mini grocery store, I have bought mostly Swedish meatballs, desserts, and chocolate. All of them are addicting.
My two minor gripes about this place is that their areas and materials are not well laid out; therefore, they are often hard to find. I think that having clearer signs and labels will solve this problem. Also, most of the furniture is not high durable quality. I have bought furniture items there in the past, and neither of them took very long to fall apart. My suggestion to the customers would be to avoid buying furniture here. Buy anything else instead.
When I am in the area and need some good materials for my home, I will continue to keep this place in mind. I feel like I can count on them to have what I need and find some great ideas of how to arrange the inside of my house.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume IKEA stands for:
I
Know
Everything
All the time
I mean, even their NIGHT CLASSES go ABOVE and BEYOND my wildest expectations!
SHOCKING why EVERYONE isn’t GOING TO SCHOOL here!??

I like Ikea furniture. I like the whole Ikea concept. But holy f*ck do I hate the store. It is hell on Earth. It goes on FOREVER and the wife and the kids get distracted by every bed, chair, toy and meatball. The shortcuts are a nice idea but even they only make it seem like a millennium instead of eternity.
So, I think their stuff and concept is five stars. The store is a personal hell that seriously makes me sink into a pit of despair and angst whenever I have to go — so one star. Averages out to three I guess.
I hope to enjoy Ikea again, just not the store. Please god, not the store.

Every time I go to IKEA at night you have to wait inline for 30 minutes to pay for your purchases.

I know I’m not alone when I say, can I live here? I’m obsessed with interior design so when I change things up in my house I know I can come here and find so much for so little. If you’re bored come here test out the beds, have some meatballs treat yoself to a bamboo plant or something.

It’s ikea… my visit was pretty uneventful; I browsed around the crowded showrooms, bought some unneeded nik-​naks, and stood in an outrageous line (and FYI the only good thing at the end of this line was the exit doors!).
I probably wouldn’t be a «normal» visitor of ikea, except their little odds and ends can be quite useful (fake candles, closest organizers, etc.). I feel management needs to open more registers, because 3 registers open and 250 people trying to checkout is never any fun.
I wouldn’t recommend this place on purpose, but if you have A LOT of time to waste then this is your place!

No matter when I go this store is always crazy. Simply crazy. Be prepared to wait in lines. For everything.
I haven’t had any trouble with any of my purchases.

I love this IKEA!
It’s huge and has a gigantic cafeteria too! I moved to Minneapolis from Chicago with just my clothes and my cat. Zero furniture! I stayed in a hotel or a few days waiting for my new apartment to become available. But it was perfect because I could arrange for home delivery of everything. Ikea is a one stop shop to outfit an entire apartment.
I bought my bed frame and mattress, Dressers, Kitchen Table, Sofa, Coffee Table, and TV stand all in one visit. No one can beat their delivery price. Between $ 69 and $ 99 (depending on distance) for any amount of furniture! I paid the extra $ 20 for them to pull everything off the shelves for me. I just handed them my list, gave them my address, and scheduled a delivery date! I also paid a little more for them to put my couch together for me too.
I came back another time to get some nightstands… But I waited two more weeks for that. Why you ask? Because then I could eat for free!!! They had a special promotion where you could have the entire bill for your meal deducted from your furniture purchase! ($ 100 minimum furniture purchase). I went with two friends, and we ate just over $ 70 worth of food. Their Salted Caramel Cake is AMAZING… We were also able to add on $ 30 worth of chocolate bars to the tab to make the total receipt value to over $ 100. I think we may have over done it with the food though… I was pretty full after eating everything…
The only reason I gave it 4 stars is because I had to put together all the furniture… I know, I know… that’s the whole idea with IKEA furniture. But it’s still a bit annoying.

I literally only shop here once a year. My sister came to town and all 4 of us shopped here. My child is now 11 so I dont need any childrens items. Today I bought a striped colorful hand towel, teal bath mat for $ 9.99, the best plastic hangers and their versión of ziploc bags which I like because the size is different then your typical ziploc Bag. ⁴⁄₅ stars due to lengthy line. It went fairly fast though. Parking on top level rocks.

Sometime in years past, I vowed to start behaving like an adult. This meant no more after-​work happy hours AND late-​night happy hours in one day, much fewer live music seen on school nights, investments made in 401ks/​Roth IRAs/​mutual funds/​fancy tupperware, always applying moisturizer on my neck AND my face and no more furniture bought at Ikea. All of these just seem like the logical grown up things to do.
Fast forward to 2015: the year of the entire home rehaul. I decided that I wanted to re-​dedicate an entire bedroom in my house. No, not to a child! I’m not that grown up yet! But to an office so that I can work a ton more from the comfort of my own house. This is also around the time when I became consumed with design blogs and had dreams of complete house remodels, grotto-​like patios and a whole bunch of subway tile dancing through my head.
Who knew that after all of this internet research, I would come to be obsessed with a $ 65 table from Ikea to turn into my perfect desk. (The 49″ Melltorp, for reference.)
The road to perfection was paved with much frustration. Somehow I became the Dutchess of Ikea after coming here so many times to try to buy this one thing. This one thing that was supposed to be the least expensive item on my office to-​do list, quickly became more spendy with all of the other stuff I found and impulsive purchases I made on my subsequent trips.
I had to come back 5 times (according to my check-​ins) before I was able to buy this damn desk. It was somehow never in stock in both parts and it took me this long to figure out that you can call them and ask them to hold something for you while it’s still in stock. Go quickly, though, because they’ll only hold them for you until the end of the day.
But I still somehow managed to fall in love with those clean, smooth, Scandinavian lines. I was dazzled by the store’s organization and my heart soars with their efficient production. Their prices always seem too good to be true and sometimes are (lesson learned already with the replacement can-​opener I bought on visit #1 of this journey).
In addition to my desk/​table purchase, I bought a million candles (which aren’t the most fragrant things I’ve ever bought, but they’ll do), closet shoe organizers (who knew that I even needed this?!), cute picture frames that I have every intention of spray painting gold. I also got a cute rug that is now in my dressing room, a stuffed kids’ toy that my dog has yet to destroy and have discovered the simple joy of those $.59 blue bags that they make you buy. Their shit is so cheap, in part, because nothing here is free. Those big blue bags have actually proven to be SUPER useful even after carting my stuff home.
Oh, and I bought easel that is one side whiteboard, one side chalkboard. Maybe I’ll save that for when I actually am grown up enough to have cute babies. Until then I’ll just write inappropriate phrases/​Jay-​Z lyrics/Wayne’s World quotes on it and have it in the corner of my cute home office that I’m almost finished putting together.

We had to wait for 20 minutes to get to a customer service agent when we called – including several redundant requests for our location – all to ask whether they still had glögg. It turns out that they had run out the month before and did not anticipate getting more until late next year, a mind-​boggling failure of supply in an international corporation in the 21^st century. I hope we never have to interact with Ikea in any way, shape, or form again.