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In a nutshell
IKEA House Warming is a month‑long, two‑storey pop‑up at 31 East 17th Street in Union Square that anchors IKEA’s US “Year of Cooking & Eating” campaign and its 40th‑anniversary celebrations, reframing the brand around kitchens, hosting and food rather than flat‑packs alone.
A real‑life IKEA mood board for mealtimes, this Union Square housewarming turns cooking, eating and hosting into an immersive journey, showing how the brand can push beyond meatballs and showrooms to position itself as a metropolitan kitchen partner.
In their words
Brand Background
House Warming is part of IKEA U.S.’s wider “Year of Cooking & Eating” initiative, marking 40 years since the brand entered the American market and 40 years of the IKEA meatball. Rather than celebrating in existing suburban stores, IKEA chose a central Manhattan location in Union Square to stage a food‑focused pop‑up that would reach apartment‑dwellers and tourists who rarely make the trip to Red Hook or New Jersey.
The activation runs from 2 to 26 October 2025, Thursday to Sunday, with early Saturday access reserved for IKEA Family and Business Network members. Note that the Pop up was extended through December 2025
The pop‑up is positioned as “a one‑of‑a‑kind event that offers a Swedish twist on cooking and eating needs within the home,” taking visitors on a journey through the full mealtime arc: storing and organising ingredients, preparing and cooking, setting and serving, eating and finally cleaning.
Visit Field notes
Enter via a ground‑floor space, through an unmissable lurid IKEA-blue facade that blends inspiration vignettes with a curated shop of kitchen and dining essentials, including limited‑edition Gustaf Westman x VINTERFINT products that bring the designer’s playful, sculptural style to seasonal serveware and decor.
Upstairs, an “IKEA Kitchen Lab” hosts programming such as gingerbread workshops, meatball recipe demonstrations, and tutorials, all designed to be bite-sized and hands-on.
Programming is at the heart of the experience. Every day features a meatball happy hour, mocktail (or cocktail) demos, children’s scavenger hunts, FRAKTA bag personalisation, and “create‑and‑take” activities like assembling custom spice blends, loose‑leaf tea mixes or infused oils. A kitchen planning studio offers on‑the‑spot consultations on layout, appliances and financing, positioning IKEA’s kitchen business as a natural next step after the inspiration hit.
The pop-up also serves as a canvas for previewing autumn/winter and holiday collections, with Factory PR and Modern Space highlighting how the rooms are styled to suggest different hosting scenarios, from Friendsgiving to small-space dinner parties.
The activation is both brand building and market research. Retail TouchPoints and Homepage News describe House Warming as a way for IKEA to test cooking‑and‑eating storytelling in a dense urban environment, with Union Square acting as a proxy for future Manhattan stores planned for SoHo and Midtown. Livid Magazine emphasises the benefit to customers who can “experience smart design, budget‑friendly finds and family‑friendly fun” without crossing the East River.
IKEA House Warming demonstrates how a mature big-box brand can utilise a pop-up to focus on a single life domain, layering events and services onto product storytelling, and trial a more editorial, city-centre expression of its offer ahead of permanent urban formats.
Checkout
As per the fieldnotes.
Other Reading
- IKEA U.S. press release “IKEA U.S. launches the year of cooking & eating with IKEA House Warming,” with full concept, quote from Paul Anderson and programme outline
- Retail TouchPoints brief on IKEA’s food‑focused NYC pop‑up and wider sustainability initiative
- Livid Magazine and LesDudis blog posts offering descriptive walkthroughs and photos of the two‑floor pop‑up
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