Archives for May 2014

5 Top Apps for Entrepreneurs

May 21, 2014 by Leave a Comment

If you’re busy entrepreneur you already have your hands full with a million different things that need to be done. Luckily today you have a world of different apps that can be used on your smartphone and tablet to make those tasks a bit simpler and easier to finish. Below are 5 of the Top Apps that no entrepreneur should be without. The best part is that all 5 of them are absolutely free! Enjoy.

Evernote. This wonderful app lets you synchronize (or “sync”) notes and share them between your smart phone, your desktop, your laptop and your tablet devices. It also lets you share files, scan things like business cards and even save notes using audio. One other nice little feature about EverNote is that you can browse online stories and either bookmark them or save clips of them to read later.

Dropbox. Millions of people absolutely love Dropbox because it lets them store photographs, documents and videos “in the cloud” and then access them from anywhere using any device that they like. One of the best reasons to get Dropbox is also that, if you happen to lose your phone or tablet (and they’re synced with your Dropbox account) you can still get them later and they will be safely waiting for you.

CloudMagic. Amazingly, Apple and A Google still haven’t mastered the ability to let users scan all of the mail that they’ve ever received to look for a note, or any other bit of specific information. Cloud Magic use the user this incredibly thorough  search functionality, supports multiple accounts, can scan messages and also suggest specific content. For entrepreneurs overwhelmed by email, it’s a great little app.

MobileDay. If you take a lot of conference calls but you’re also on the road quite a bit, Mobile Day is a definite must for your app collection. With it you can scan your calendar and import all information from any conference that you’re going to attend and, when it’s time to make the call, you can join simply and easily with just 1 click.

 

Even better, if you would like to arrange your own conference call you simply tell Mobile Day who to invite and it will send those people the details as well as set up the conference call via its own service.

Producteev.  As a busy entrepreneur delegating tasks is something you need to master quickly. With Producteev you can track any ongoing tasks that your team might have, track their progress as well, set due dates and milestones and even use its filter program to see the tasks already assigned to a specific employee. For those entrepreneurs that are great at delegating, Producteev is a definite help.

There are more great apps out there for entrepreneurs, to be sure, so don’t limit yourself to these 5. However, these are a great place to start and will help any busy entrepreneur to get a lot more done every day.

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship

With food prices rising sharply, Chipotle gets sent to increase their prices as well

May 5, 2014 by Leave a Comment

When it comes to increasing food prices, consumers aren’t the only ones feeling the pinch.  Chipotle, one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in the United States, is feeling the pain of food price increases as well and is set to pass along some of those increased costs to their customers, something they haven’t done in nearly 3 years.

On the company’s most recent earnings call, their chief financial officer, Jack Hartung, said that the price hike is likely to be “somewhere in the mid-single digits.”

Those increases will begin rolling out this quarter with their new menus and, by the third quarter of 2014, Chipotle will be installing new pricing boards with the increased prices reflected.

One of the reasons for the increase is due to the drop in margins that Chipotle had in his last report, nearly 40 points and blamed mostly on the fact that beef, avocados and cheese had all gone up in price.

Chipotle reported that their food costs rose to nearly 35% of their revenues in the first quarter of 2014 due to the jump in price of all three of those main ingredients and Hartung said that “beef prices are expected to continue to move higher as it remains tight.”

To make things worse, steak costs for the burrito chain are at an all-time high and their food costs could rise as high as 36% in April, further eating into their profits nationwide.

After their first quarter earnings report was released the chain’s shares initially gained but, after their conference call, quickly turned negative. Despite poor weather throughout most of the United States, sales jumped nearly 14% at comparable restaurants around the country.

Chipotle’s net income rose 8.5% however, to $83.1 million or $2.64 a share. Their overall revenue jumped nearly 25% to $904.2 million, up from 726.8 million during the same time period last year.

The chain expects to open just under 200 restaurants in 2014 and, excluding any price increases, also expects to generate a high single-digit comps sale increase.

It’s obvious that Chipotle is doing well and will continue to do so in the future. That being said, increasing food prices affect them just as much as they affect the average American family and, due to those increases, their prices have been forced to go up. This hasn’t affected the quality of their service or food however and, hopefully, won’t negatively affect it in the future either.

Filed Under: General Business News