Never underestimate the power of a well-timed Instagram reel. Or the winning combination of alpacas and coffee. Or a child’s Christmas wish. Or random acts of kindness, for that matter.
Rosie Mae’s Alpaca Farm & Boutique, located down a winding country road in Wildwood, Georgia, offers customers a unique experience — enjoying a cup of fresh, locally roasted coffee while feeding and petting alpacas. Owners Max and Meagan Lewis said that, since it opened in November of 2022, the farm has steadily attracted about 50 to 100 customers on any given Saturday.
But the game changed when Hope Maum visited this spring. On April 15, Maum, founder of Experience Chattanooga guided tours, shared a reel about Rosie Mae’s on her Instagram page.
“That next weekend, we had about 500 to 600 people per day,” Maegen Lewis said in a telephone interview. “We had cars parking all down the roads, up in our neighbor’s parking areas — everywhere. It was crazy.”
Now, a month later, Maum’s video continues climbing. As of Tuesday, the reel has more than 1 million views, 38,000 likes and 340 comments.