To further its mission of creating a better everyday life for the many, IKEA set out to enrich its Restaurant & Café experience by offering healthier and more sustainable food options. Recognizing that its Scandinavian framing of sustainability might not resonate in Asia, and that in many ways Asian cultures may hold more advanced or culturally embedded perspectives on sustainable eating, IKEA sought to listen and learn first.
We explored how sustainability is perceived, practiced, and prioritized across Asian contexts, from food production and policy to everyday eating habits and emerging lifestyle trends. Through immersions with consumers and in-depth conversations with experts in Shanghai and Hong Kong, we surfaced the motivations, barriers and cultural codes shaping how people think about food and the planet.
What we found was a significant cultural and linguistic gap between how sustainability is framed in Asia and IKEA’s Western-origin perspective. These insights inspired a series of dining concepts and food experience prototypes designed to make sustainable eating feel exciting and familiar. Healthy eating may be universal, but the language of sustainability is deeply local.
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