The Green Britain Centre in Swaffham, Norfolk has launched a fully vegan menu, following the appointment of a new head chef.
The Centre, which is funded by Ecotricity's charitable arm - the Green Britain Foundation - celebrated its most successful year on record in 2016, welcoming more visitors, hosting more events and serving more food than ever before.
Jannine Parry (pictured) has been named as the Centre's new head chef and her menu will focus on delivering organic, local and seasonal food with a minimal environmental impact and using produce grown on site in the organic vegetable garden where possible.
The Centre has been vegetarian since it was taken over by the Green Britain Foundation in 2011 - the final step to make the Centre fully vegan has been to remove cow's milk from the menu.
Parry said, 'I feel very privileged to be part of a great team which is creating an amazing plant based café using local growers and the organic garden right outside our door.
'I've been vegan for 12 years and will be using my food waste, community building and organic gardening skills to create a café that is truly for everyone.'
The Centre includes a 100m windmill, which was the first in the world open to the public to climb, as well as a solar panel which tracks the sun, an organic garden, a variety of hands-on exhibits, two record-breaking renewable powered cars, a 100-seater theatre and a vegan café.
It's open to the public all year round, hosts sustainability focused school trips and also has a range of fantastic events and conferencing spaces.
A total of 22,000 people visited the centre in 2016, with 8,000 of them climbing the 300 steps to the viewing platform at the top of the windmill to take in the fantastic views of the surrounding countryside.
More than 140 schools - with 5,500 pupils - attended the centre over the year to find out more about the key themes of Energy, Transport, Food and Making Room for Nature. They visited from across Britain and around the world, with a fifth of those coming from overseas including France, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Poland and Portugal.
13,000 delegates attended more than 600 events and conferences over the year, making use of the various flexible meeting rooms in the space.
The café also proved more popular than ever, serving an average of 25 meals per day and a total of 12,680 drinks, as well as catering for the events and conferences.
Paul Woodmin, head of the Green Britain Centre, said, 'We had a great year as we welcomed visitors from far and wide to the centre - and we want that to continue in 2017.
'The Green Britain Centre is cutting edge environmental hub which is a great place for schools, businesses and local people to discover the latest technology in Energy, Transport and Food and learn how to apply these things to everyday life.'
