In June 2016, the Swedish home furnishings company IKEA launched the latest in its series of advertisments, The Wonderful Everyday. Called “Cooks”, the advert featured a grandfather and granddaughter making a meal together when the grandmother and her daughter go out for the day, leaving the grandfather in charge. After a nervous start, struggling to find the right ingredients and appropriate cooking utensils, they begin to have fun, messing around in the kitchen and cooking lunch together[1]. Even when the grandfather looks in the fridge and discovers that some food has already been prepared for them, they carry on with their meal and are still enjoying themselves when the mother and grandmother return home. A voice-over (in heavy Swedish accent) delivers the final line: “When we cook together, we make more than just food”. It is a touching parable of modern family life, playing on the ambivalence of intergenerational relations, light-heartedly challenging conventional gender stereotypes and making witty reference to current conerns about domestic cooking skills. The film was shot by Jean–Pierre Jeunet, director of the whimsical 2001 film Amélie, and was part of IKEA’s “distinctive, emotionally resonant and brilliantly strategic” cooperation with the advertising agency Mother London (Campaign, 2016c). Discussing the campaign, Laurent Tiersen, IKEA’s British and Irish marketing manager said: Food is ever more prevalent in today’s culture – we’re obsessed with taking pictures of food, watching cooking shows about food and even reading about food. And yet, research indicates that there is a large amount of people who cook and eat most meals alone. We see food and cooking as an activity to bring people together and take ourselves less seriously to bring a bit of joy to our everyday lives (quoted in The Drum, 2016). The company later won an award for Creative Marketer of the Year (2016), and IKEA’s relationship with Mother London was described as the UK’s most creative advertising partnership (Campaign, 2016b). But what does this simple exposition of the joys of cooking reveal about contemporary family life and the pleasures and anxieties associated with “feeding the family”? Arguably, the ad addresses long-standing fears about the decline of cooking skills, boldly asserted in TV series such as Jamie’s Ministry of Food but actually based on rather thin evidence[2]. It provides a humorous commentary on men’s changing domestic roles and the contested spaces of the contemporary kitchen (see Meah and Jackson, 2013) and an alternative to the conventional view that cooking is a serious business, requiring discipline and skills that many find intimidating. This is not an isolated example. Family dynamics are a key component of many contemporary advertising campaigns. In an earlier IKEA ad, for example, a young French boy is shown fooling his estranged parents into providing him with lavish meals (Campaign, 2016a). The “Cooking is caring” ad begins with the father and son shadow-boxing as they walk along the street together. When they reach the father’s home, he asks how his son has enjoyed the previous week at his mother’s house. He replies that his mother has cooked him macaroni every night. With an appalled look, the father then sets to work in the kitchen, chopping fresh ingredients and making an elaborate supper, which is greeted appreciatively by his son (“Mmmm”). The film then switches to the mother’s house where the young boy uses the same tactic (“Every evening? Just macaroni?”), which leads to more elaborate cooking and a self-satisfied smirk from the boy[3].