You walked into one of the largest furniture retailers on earth and bought a coffee for about a dollar.
The coffee cost less than the cardboard box the chair comes in.
In the US it is not even a dollar anymore. IKEA Family members get filtered coffee or tea free.
Free. At a company with 915 million store visits a year.
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Now list what has to happen before that cup reaches your hand. Someone bought the beans. Roasted them. Shipped them. Brewed them. Maintained the machine. Cleaned it. The cup exists. The lid exists. The electricity, the seating, the floor space, the staff, the waste disposal.
Then IKEA hands it to you and asks for a dollar. Or nothing.
The obvious read is that this is a rounding error somebody stopped auditing.
It is the opposite. This is one of the most deliberate decisions in the building, and IKEA has been making it since 1960.
Because the coffee was never a beverage.
It is infrastructure. And IKEA figured that out sixty six years ago, by watching people walk out of the store at lunchtime.