Director of Finance

Blake's Orchard, Inc.•Armada, MI

5d•Onsite

About The Position

Since 1946, Blake’s Orchard & Cider Mill has been a cornerstone of Michigan agriculture and agritourism: an 80-year family operation with deep roots in Armada and a genuine growth ambition. Our mission is to cultivate growth in our people, our community, and our business. We farm, we produce, we host, and we sell across four locations, restaurants, tasting rooms, retail, and a fall season that draws guests from across the state. The Director of Finance carries the responsibility of careful decision-making to grow and protect the business. This is the senior-most finance seat at Blake’s Orchard & Cider Mill, reporting directly to the President and sitting above the Controller. The role owns the financial strategy, planning, and performance of the business, partnering with the President and ownership on decisions shaping the company's future, including capital investment, growth planning, banking relationships, and long-range financial health. The role also leads the finance function day to day, with the Controller and accounting team reporting to them, and owns the Information Technology function for the Orchard. This role sets the company’s operating tempo by leading weekly L10 meetings, running weekly financial reviews with department leaders, and building financial literacy across the business. This is a business partner role as much as a finance role, requiring comfort with both financial analysis and the operational aspects of a seasonal, asset-heavy, multi-channel agricultural business.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field
8+ years of progressive finance and accounting experience, including leadership of a finance function
Proven experience partnering with executive leadership or ownership on strategic financial decisions
Strong command of financial planning and analysis, budgeting, forecasting, and cash flow management
Experience managing banking and lender relationships including credit facilities and covenant reporting
Deep understanding of GAAP, internal controls, and financial reporting standards
Demonstrated ability to lead, develop, and retain a finance team
Experience owning or overseeing an IT function, or the demonstrated capability and appetite to take it on
Working knowledge of systems infrastructure including databases, network and endpoint security, malware protection, and backup and recovery
Comfortable leading a recurring leadership meeting and holding peers accountable in the room
Excellent communicator: you make complex financial information clear to people who are not finance people
Advanced Excel and strong ERP proficiency

Nice To Haves

CPA, CMA, or MBA
Experience in agriculture, food and beverage, hospitality, retail, or another seasonal business
NetSuite experience
Multi-entity accounting and consolidation experience
Familiarity with agricultural accounting considerations including crop and biological asset treatment
Experience in a family-owned or closely held business environment
Familiarity with EOS, Traction, or a comparable operating system including L10 meeting discipline and scorecards
Experience managing IT vendors, managed service providers, or an internal IT team

Responsibilities

Partner with the President and ownership on financial strategy, growth planning, and long-range business decisions.
Prepare and present financial results, forecasts, and analysis to the President and ownership with clarity and directness.
Build the financial case for major decisions: new locations, capital projects, acquisitions, and expansion opportunities.
Provide financial guidance to department leaders across Farm Operations, Food & Beverage, Retail, Events, and Production.
Translate strategy into financial plans and financial results into plain language leadership can act on.
Own the annual budgeting process across all departments and locations.
Build and maintain rolling forecasts that account for seasonality, weather risk, crop yield, and guest traffic variability.
Develop and maintain a three-year financial outlook with integrated cash flow forecasts and long-term capital strategy.
Lead monthly and quarterly business reviews with department leaders: analyze variances, identify drivers, and drive corrective action.
Build financial models for scenario planning, capital decisions, and new business opportunities.
Own cash flow planning, working capital management, and liquidity across the seasonal cycle.
Manage banking and lender relationships including credit facilities, covenants, and reporting requirements.
Lead capital planning and financing strategy for equipment, facilities, orchard investment, and expansion projects.
Oversee treasury operations, debt management, and lease obligations.
Manage relationships with external partners including auditors, tax advisors, and insurance brokers.
Lead the finance and accounting function with the Controller and accounting team reporting to you.
Oversee the monthly close, financial statement preparation, and the accuracy and timeliness of all financial reporting.
Ensure sound internal controls, appropriate segregation of duties, and audit readiness across the organization.
Oversee tax planning and compliance in partnership with external tax advisors, including agricultural and multi-entity considerations.
Develop the finance team: build capability, create growth paths, and raise the standard of what this function delivers.
Build succession plans and cross-train the team so the finance function is never person-dependent.
Build a team that does not just follow financial processes but teaches and enforces them, so good practice becomes embedded across the organization.
Own the financial systems environment including NetSuite; drive adoption, data integrity, and continuous improvement.
Build reporting and dashboards that give leaders across the business timely visibility into their performance.
Improve financial processes to reduce manual work, shorten the close, and increase the speed of insight.
Partner with operations on costing, margin analysis, and unit economics across farm, production, retail, and hospitality.
Support pricing, inventory, and capital allocation decisions with rigorous analysis.
Facilitate and lead the weekly L10 input for Finance & Accounting: drive actionable outcomes, hold the room accountable, and keep the focus on what moves the business.
Ensure L10 dashboards and scorecards are accurate, reliable, and consistently updated so decisions are made on real numbers.
Hold structured weekly reviews with department leaders covering sales revenue, profit, cash flow, and controllable factors including labor, cost of goods, and expenses.
Provide financial education that equips leaders to contribute confidently in weekly and monthly reviews and to demonstrate genuine P&L ownership.
Drive cultural adoption of financial discipline across the organization; be approachable enough that leaders come to Finance early rather than late.
Own the IT function for Blake’s Orchard & Cider Mill including managing the Director in Technology as they take on strategy, budget, vendor relationships, and team leadership.
Be the accountable leader for systems infrastructure including networks, databases, endpoint and email security, malware protection, and backup and disaster recovery.
Lead technology planning and capital investment decisions across business systems, point of sale, and operational technology with the Director of Data, Systems and Ecommerce running point and you guiding them through it.
Oversee risk management including insurance coverage, crop risk, and business continuity considerations.
Ensure compliance with all applicable financial, tax, and regulatory requirements across entities.
Steward the Family legacy of this business: make decisions with an eighty-year horizon, not a twelve-month one.
Support the Community commitments Blake’s makes with sound financial planning that allows us to keep making them.