IKEA stores may still be offering a "taste of Sweden" in their buffets, but the menu in Russia will soon be missing two signature items — Scandinavian cheese and salmon — due to a countrywide ban on many food imports.
Several sorts of Swedish-made cheese and Norwegian salmon will disappear from the buffets entirely when supplies run out because IKEA has no intention of replacing them, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.
"There will be no substitutes because the cheese is specifically Swedish," Maria Tikhonova told ITAR-Tass. "We also see no sense in replacing Norwegian salmon with some other kind because this is a familiar Scandinavian product."
Russia recently banned raw food imports from the European Union, United States, Australia, Canada and Norway in retaliation for Western sanctions over its involvement in the Ukraine crisis.
But IKEA is not worried that the missing food items will significantly affect the retailer's bottom line: Such items account for only about 1 percent of IKEA's food sales, the report said.
And don't worry about those "Swedish" meatballs: They'll still be available because, despite their name, they're produced in Russia, Tikhonova said.
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