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Wilcoxson’s moving on from Facebook flap

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Wilcoxson's LogoWilcoxson’s, the Livingston-based ice cream company whose president drew the fury of the Internet a few weeks ago over an insensitive comment on its Facebook page, has told its online fans that it’s done talking about the matter.

On the company’s restored Facebook page, it writes that while Wilcoxson’s has allowed discussion of the Sept. 21 commenting incident, the company is ready to move on.

“We are not going to continue to host a public discussion about this incident any longer,” [the company writes on its page](https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wilcoxsons-Ice-Cream/119267879016?fref=ts&filter=1).

>In the spirit of civility, we feel the conversation has turned into a rant we can no longer support here. We want to thank the people that emailed us questions and those that made thoughtful comments here, even though they were negative. We deserved to be criticized. We let down our fans and customers, and for this we are truly sorry.

On Sept. 26, [the Chronicle reported](http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/economy/article_ff552994-07fc-11e2-889a-001a4bcf887a.html) Wilcoxson’s president Matt Schaeffer, responding to a Wyoming Muslim’s question about whether the ice cream’s gelatin was kosher, had said:

>“We don’t deliver outside of Montana, certainly not Pakistan.”

The comment provoked immediate angry responses from friends of the Wyoming man, and soon screenshots and news of the comment were posted to Reddit and other online news sources.

The response was so negative that Schaeffer decided to take the Facebook page down entirely.

>People posted such nasty things on the Wilcoxson’s page that he deleted it and said, “It’s no longer going to be in existence.”

In [a later interview with the Billings Gazette](http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/facebook-trouble-for-a-montana-company/article_d7101c11-0010-5cae-b40c-39b2a909ac82.html), Schaeffer softened his social media stance, saying, “The page will be put back up soon. It will be run by somebody other than myself, who is more adept at it.”

Schaeffer originally had taken over the page from a fan after the fan said the page became too much work.

[The page is back now](https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wilcoxsons-Ice-Cream/119267879016), and whoever is running it has made sure to [address the comment controversy](https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10151428540914017&id=119267879016).

> UPDATE FROM WILCOXSON’S: For several days, we have been hosting a discussion on Facebook about an incident that happened in September where our president made an insensitive comment to a customer online. Our president has apologized publicly and the company has apologized as well (please see our About section). In the spirit of civility, we feel the conversation has turned into a rant we can no longer support here. We want to thank the people that emailed us questions and those that made thoughtful comments here, even though they were negative. We deserved to be criticized. We let down our fans and customers, and for this we are truly sorry. You can continue to email us at [email protected] or message us here.
>
> We feel that it is time to give our Facebook page back to our fans and friends. Be assured we read every comment you made and will take it to heart. We are in the midst of having discussions about how to change our customer service protocol so this doesn’t happen again. This incident does not reflect the true heart and culture of our company and we are saddened to think that people might think poorly of our company because of this one incident.
>
> Unfortunately, for the sake of our community, we will delete comments and ban users who continue to violate the posting guidelines in our About section. We wish it wasn’t this way, but we feel the conversation has run its course. Thanks again to those who have supported us—we will work hard to regain your trust.

The above posting currently has 71 likes and 54 comments. Most of those comments are positive; considering the moderation policy outlined above (and in [this comment](https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10151428540914017&id=119267879016&comment_id=24525178&offset=0&total_comments=54) from the company), that’s not surprising.

The page has 3,279 fans.

**Update** – A commenter notes that Wilcoxson’s mistyped their email address in the message I relayed here. Correct, it is .