De Zaanse Schans is a must-see for its two million plus national and international visitors. This is where visitors discover what makes the Netherlands so quintessentially Dutch. Cheese plays a prominent role in these stories. For Henri Willig’s cheese farm De Catharinahoeve DST concepted, designed and realised a high-capacity permanent exhibition on cheesemaking. A high-volume visitor flow and multi-linguistic approach were vital to this project. Next to this project, DST also developed a self-guided tour for Henri Willig’s cheese farm in Katwoude.
Pre-visit experience
To help visitors understand what cheese actually is, and how it’s made, we converted the monumental barn De Haal to a pre-visit experience. This is where visitors discover all about cheese in their own time, using film, imagery, text and exhibitry. Afterwards visitors enter a tasting room where they sample the taste of cheese, guided by cheese connoisseurs.
Selfguided tour
To better get Henri Willig Cheese’s stories across to visitors, we also developed a self-guided tour for its Katwoude cheese farm, on grassland, cows and cheese – of course. This enables visitors to discover how special Henri Willig’s connection to his animals and cheese is. DST developed its concept, and made a record-time design and build possible in time for the official opening.
Result
With De Haal Henri Willig Cheese doubled the time tourists spend in his cheese farm. This translates to higher cheese sales and more brand publicity. By creating low-threshold social-media-moments, Henri Willig Cheese also enlarged its online presence in a very effective low-cost way. The self-guided tour in Katwoude provided an accessible visit to this working cheese farm with its special Jersey cows.
