AN Ayrshire dairy business has hit out at social media giant Meta after its Instagram account was hacked, forcing it to “start again” with a new page and rebuild its bank of followers which had peaked at 22,000 prior to the incident in June.

The Coo Shed, based on the Kerr family’s South Corton Farm, had built up a loyal following of regular visitors to the popular farm café that specialises in homemade food and cakes – it has its own in-house bakery – and also offers fresh farm milk in glass bottles from its grass-fed herd of 300 Holstein Friesian cows from The Milk Hoose vending facility.

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Co-owner Alison Kerr, who opened The Coo Shed in 2017 as an extension of the family business which includes the long-established Corton Plants, admits that she fell for a scam when she was going through the process of gaining a blue verified badge for her Instagram account. Soon after, she lost control of her page.

“I was gutted because we’d built up such a following and Meta are doing nothing to help,” said Ms Kerr. “I’ve spoken to eight different people now and each of them told me it would fixed within 24 hours. That was at the end of June.

“We’ve had no choice but to start again with a new Insta page, but it’s been soul-destroying having to start over. We’re on Facebook and have about 50,000 followers there but we got a lot of traction from Instagram, and it’s been such a great marketing tool for the business.

“Our videos showcase what we do here on a daily basis and when I post an image of a cake or a scone, the ‘likes’ just rack up – it’s an incredibly powerful marketing medium for a business like ours.”

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Ms Kerr said that while losing the account had affected the staff too as it had been such a key part of promoting The Coo Shed and getting the business’s message across that it’s a family firm providing local jobs and supporting local suppliers, she wanted to warn other businesses to tread carefully.

“I consider myself to be clued up when it comes to things like this and when I got the email from what turned out to be the scammer, I checked it carefully before clicking on the link – that shows you how clever these people are. I’m still hopeful that we might get our case sorted out in time but surely with a big company like Meta there must be an easier way to deal with situations like this.”

Meanwhile, The Coo Shed can still celebrate after winning its latest award – Dairy Product of the Year for its fresh whole milk in glass bottles – at the recent Scotland Food & Drink Excellence Awards. “We’re absolutely delighted because it puts us on the map and provides recognition for our brand – and it’s a pat on the back for our farm.

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“In 2025, the family will have been farming at South Corton for 100 years. My son, David, is the fifth generation, so to win the award was quite something.”

Ms Kerr and her husband, Willie, were early pioneers in milk vending when they set up their facility in May 2018. “I don’t like the word ‘diversification’ but we were looking at options for extra income and I’d read about milk vending,” she noted.

“The Willis brothers [Angus and William] had installed a vending machine at Forest Farm in Aberdeenshire at the end of 2017 and we went up there to have to look and took inspiration from them.

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“People like the glass bottles and The Milk Hoose is open 24/7 so it’s convenient. Customers park and can see the cows in the fields so it’s an education process too – I think generally there’s a lack of education around what farms do so it’s good to be able to show people.

“We’ve since invested in a refill-only machine and, during the second lockdown, my daughter Joanne, who is also a big part of the business, came up with the idea of flavoured milkshakes so it’s constantly evolved.”

The Coo Shed’s fresh, whole milk is non-homogenised and batch pasteurised, and goes into the vending machines chilled to below four degrees within three hours of the cows being milked.

Selling milk this way reduces processing and transport costs as well as reducing the use of single-use plastic as glass bottles can be used time and time again.

And the next time you bite into a KitKat, you’ll be getting a taste of South Ayrshire – The Coo Shed supplies its milk to Nestlé’s Girvan site for the milk crumb that is used in the confectionery giant’s iconic biscuit bar.

Meta has been contacted for comment.