Burnbrae president honoured by grocery industry

Margaret Hudson, president of Burnbrae Farms, has been chosen as one of this year’s recipients of The Golden Pencil Award. She will be recognized this year along with the Co-CEO’s of Farm Boy, Jean Louis Bellemare and Jeff York.

The Golden Pencil Award is the Canadian grocery industry’s highest honour for lifetime achievement. It has been given annually since 1957, usually to one deserving leader from the grocery Retailer community and one from the grocery Supplier community.

Past winners include some of the most well-known and influential leaders in the history of the Canadian grocery industry.

In fact, Hudson’s father, Joe Hudson, was selected for this honour in 2001. They are the only father daughter combination to have won this award in it 63 year history.

Hudson grew up on the original family farm in Lyn, Ont., just outside Brockville, and was exposed to the family business from a very young age.

She has worked for the company full-time since 1990 and has been president since 2008.

Since joining the company, she has championed a string of successful product launches that transformed the egg category, including such favourites as Naturegg Omega 3, Free Run and Organic shell eggs, as well as Simply Egg Whites liquid products, EGGS2go! hardboiled eggs, and EGG Bakes! frozen products… winning an incredible 13 Grand Prix New Product Awards along the way, the most of any Canadian manufacturing company.

One of her passions has been to educate non-farming Canadians about farming. She served on the Royal Winter Fair Board for six years and has been a leader in promoting transparency as a means of building trust.

Hudson participates and represents Burnbrae Farms in a number of other industry related forums and boards including GS1 (UPC code), the Food and Consumer Products Council (FCPC) and, more recently, The Grocery Foundation Board (Toonies for Tummies).

In 2017, along with her sibling shareholders, she established the Burnbrae Farms Foundation, which has supported many causes including school breakfast programs, disaster relief and community-based initiatives like the renovation of Brockville Railway Tunnel.

She also worked tirelessly with her leadership team to ensure that Canadians had access to safe nutritious affordable eggs during the pandemic.

Hudson weighs in on this honour. “It is such an honour to be receiving this award, you cannot possibly imagine. I have admired past honourees for decades and to be a recipient myself is truly humbling.

“I’m so grateful for the support I have always received from my family and my colleagues at Burnbrae and want to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone, I feel so fortunate to be surrounded by such a great team.”