Plant Controller

About Ready Foods 

Ready Foods is a Denver-based, family-owned food manufacturer on a transformation journey. While rooted in more than five decades of manufacturing excellence, we are building the next generation of food manufacturing by combining Lean principles, Industry 4.0 technologies, digital transformation and systems thinking. 

Across our four Denver facilities, we are creating a connected enterprise that leverages data, automation, continuous improvement and employee expertise to drive better decisions and better outcomes. Our culture is built on respect for people, operational excellence, learning, collaboration and a relentless pursuit of improvement. We are looking for individuals who want to help shape the future of manufacturing while making a meaningful impact on our customers, employees and community. 

About the Role 

We are looking for an experienced Plant Controller to serve as a hands-on finance partner to our manufacturing operations while helping Ready Foods better understand plant performance and the true cost of our products. 

This role goes beyond producing accurate financial reports. The Plant Controller will spend meaningful time in our plants, learn how products are made and connect financial results to the operational conditions that create them. This person will lead plant-level financial analysis, budgeting, forecasting, standard costing, inventory and variance analysis while partnering with leaders to identify issues, understand root causes and improve decisions. 

The right candidate combines strong accounting fundamentals with manufacturing fluency, curiosity and the ability to follow an issue from the financial result back to the process. We need someone who can explain not only what changed, but why it changed and what the organization can learn from it. 

Responsibilities include: 

• Act as the primary Finance partner to plant leadership, translating operating activity into clear financial insight and action. 

• Spend regular time on the plant floor to understand how products are made, how labor and equipment are used and where process conditions affect financial performance. 

• Lead plant budgeting, forecasting, financial analysis and plant-level performance reporting. 

• Own and explain plant P&L performance by connecting financial results to operating drivers rather than stopping at reported variances. 

• Lead standard-cost and manufacturing-variance analysis across materials, labor, overhead, yield, scrap, volume and other production drivers. 

• Partner with Operations to investigate trends, distinguish accounting or data issues from operating issues and identify root causes and improvement opportunities. 

• Oversee inventory valuation, inventory controls, physical counts and the investigation and reconciliation of inventory variances. 

• Strengthen BOM, routing, labor, overhead and other assumptions that affect product cost and operational decision-making. 

• Support capital expenditure analysis and post-investment review, including financial assumptions and operational benefits. 

• Support accurate and timely month-end close, account reconciliations, internal controls and audit requirements related to plant operations. 

• Develop plant scorecards, KPIs and financial and operational reporting that help leaders identify problems sooner and make better decisions. 

• Use ERP, business intelligence and plant data to improve visibility, reduce manual work and strengthen decision support. 

• Contribute to Lean and continuous-improvement work by helping teams quantify waste, constraints, improvement opportunities and financial impact. 

Requirements include: 

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance or a related field. 

• At least seven years of progressive finance or accounting experience, including meaningful experience in a manufacturing environment. 

• Strong knowledge of manufacturing accounting, standard costing, inventory, budgeting, forecasting and financial reporting. 

• Demonstrated ability to investigate manufacturing variances and connect financial results to what is occurring in the operation. 

• Experience working directly with plant leadership and cross-functional teams in a hands-on operating environment. 

• Strong ERP, analytical and data skills, with the ability to turn complex information into practical business insight. 

• Clear communication skills and the confidence and curiosity to ask questions, challenge assumptions and follow issues to root cause. 

• A practical, hands-on working style and willingness to spend time where the work happens. 

Experience in food or process manufacturing, multi-site manufacturing, Lean Accounting, continuous improvement or systems thinking is a plus. A CPA, CMA or MBA is also preferred. 

The Leader We're Looking For 

You'll be successful here if you can balance financial discipline, manufacturing knowledge and systems thinking. You build trust with plant leaders without avoiding accountability, use data to create understanding rather than simply report results and look beyond individual variances to understand what may be happening in the broader manufacturing system. 

This isn't an opportunity to simply maintain accounting reports. It's an opportunity to help Ready Foods build a stronger plant-finance and product-cost system that improves visibility, strengthens decisions and supports the future of our manufacturing operations.