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Phase One Of Our New Look Visitor Centre Is Open!
Aug 18, 2010
We have opened phase one of our new look visitor centre with a new specialist cheese shop, deli, and coffee shop, as part of a £800,000-plus expansion.
The Creamery is substantially expanding its popular Visitor Centre to meet customer demand.
Tripling the size of the extremely popular cheese shop has provided a more spacious sales area for its traditional-style, waxed and muslin-bound cheeses, and more room for cheese tastings too.
The deli’s offering includes more than 100 quality regional food products, sourced from local suppliers.
The new ‘1897’ Coffee Shop* now has a capacity for 72 guests. Serving speciality coffees made with delicious milk from local farms, the coffee shop has spectacular views of the surrounding countryside.
The Visitor Centre has already recruited four extra staff, taking employee numbers to 43, with more to follow during the next few months.
David Hartley, The Creamery’s Managing Director, said: “The Wensleydale Creamery is helping strengthen the sustainability of the Dales as a tourist destination through the substantial expansion of its Visitor Centre.
“We are delighted that our much improved cheese shop, deli and coffee shop are now open for business and look forward to welcoming more visitors to the Visitor Centre this summer.
“This is only the first phase of our ambitious expansion plans with much more to come in the late summer and autumn as further improvements are completed.”
The centre is already one of the largest tourist attractions in the Yorkshire Dales with more than 200,000 people a year coming through its doors. It is estimated the new-look Visitor Centre, which is being extended in phases, will attract an extra 50,000 visitors a year.
The design of the extension is in keeping with the surrounding locality with the external walls built in local natural stone.
Regional development agency Yorkshire Forward has supported the expansion in the form of a 30% grant from the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE).
RDPE, which stands for Rural Development Programme for England, has £65m to invest in rural businesses over a six year period through a number of programmes. The Wensleydale Creamery accessed its grant through the Rural Enterprise Investment Programme which offers grants starting from £25,000 and is available to rural businesses wanting to grow and become more productive.
