How Farm Boy’s Josh Drache Takes The Lead

With trend-setting flavours, chef-driven standards and a culture that empowers in-store teams to champion what they love, Farm Boy’s private-label line has built a loyal customer following. Now with more than 2,100 SKUs, it has helped fuel the grocer’s success across Ontario—51 stores and counting, with three more announced last summer.

Leading the nine-person private-label team is Josh Drache, who joined Farm Boy in 2011 as executive chef and became VP, private label and product development in 2019.

Drache shares his leadership philosophy, how one employee’s passion saved a fan-favourite dip, and the personal story behind Farm Boy’s beloved banana bread. (This interview has been edited for clarity and length.)

You’ve spent some of your career in restaurant kitchens. How did that inform the kind of leader you are today? 

My background is as a cook and chef—I spent 25 years behind a stove. One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was from Mark Flanagan, the royal chef to the King of England. He said, “We’ve all had sous chefs who can cook circles around us. The difference is—we’ll admit it.” My takeaway from that was real leadership is about working with people to help them become the best version of themselves. 

At Farm Boy, I’ve also been fortunate to have phenomenal mentors—five or six leaders who coached me, onboarded me and helped me understand how to connect a product with the customer. Once you’ve experienced that, passing it on becomes natural.

What does leadership look like day to day for you? 

At this point in my career, the real joy is watching other people take the lead. I look at the younger wave coming into Farm Boy—many of whom are my kids’ age—and I’m excited by their ideas, their tastes, their energy. My role now is a bit like the bumpers of bowling: I keep things from going too far into the gutter, but the throws are theirs.

At Farm Boy, we’re laser-focused on what’s right for the customer. Everything we do comes back to the customer’s emotional reaction to a product.

Can you share a recent example of leadership in action—something that shows how your team brings a product to life? 

From day one, I learned almost nothing succeeds because of one person alone. A typical product touches hundreds of hands: retail operations delivering the front-line experience; merchandising; marketing; our in-house teams making soups, salads, burgers and sausages; store managers running demos—it’s a symphony. Whether you’re the first violin or the timpani, it only works if everyone is playing together.

Here’s a perfect example. We have a product—our Spicy Edamame Kale Dip—that sat on the shelves for 18 months, barely moving. By all rights, it should have been pulled. Then one director of retail operations in Ottawa put it on a demo, loved it and called every one of his stores and said: “You got to get behind this—it’s really good.” Suddenly, sales took off in his stores. Then in other stores across Ottawa. Then all of southwestern Ontario. And when Farm Boy launched in Toronto, the dip became a top-selling SKU. I can’t explain how it happened, but I know this: if not for that one person’s energy and belief, we probably wouldn’t be selling that dip today. That’s the power of a single employee believing in something.

Speaking of popular products, what’s the origin story behind Farm Boy’s banana bread?

When we began building our in-house bakery, we knew we wanted a line of loaves. For me, the strongest memories in life are food memories, and mine take me straight back to childhood. My birthday cake every year was this chocolate-banana cake my mom made. Moist banana layers, chocolate buttercream, sliced bananas. Pure joy.

So, when we started developing banana bread, that was the feeling I wanted to recreate. Not necessarily the exact recipe, but the emotion. We experimented a lot. The biggest challenge was ripening bananas fast enough—we all know you need them almost black. Eventually, we decided to roast them instead. Roasting intensifies the flavour, adds sweetness and lets you reduce some of the sugar. When we finally got that dense, moist, memory-triggering version, we launched it. Eight or nine years later, every time I taste it, I still get taken back to when I was a kid.

You’ve said you try to lead with curiosity and openness. Why is that important to you?

I visit spots in the province that have blown up on Instagram—not just to eat, but to talk to chefs, learn from them and build relationships. You never know where it will lead. For example, I dropped into Terroni in Toronto one night, loved their bakeries and products, and now we’re bringing some of their items—olive oil, pepperoncini and a few others— into our downtown Toronto stores. It’s not under our brand, but it’s a cool collaboration born simply from being curious and open and seeking out great food.

What do you do outside of work that helps you be a better leader? 

Two things. First, I eat—a lot. I travel around Ontario and beyond to see what young chefs are doing and how they are innovating. I visit our competition. I scour Instagram. A group of us share our food finds. If I didn’t try something in our store, someone else on the team did.

Second, I walk. Obsessively. About two hours a day—45 minutes before work, some at lunch and more at the end of the day. It clears my mind and lets me stay grounded. Whether I dream up what’s next for our customers or the environment I want to create for the team, I’m able to come back, share those ideas with the team and we work together to make them a reality. The bumpers go up, and off they go!