A La Mode Shoppes vs Papa Murphy's

Papa Murphy’s is the stronger opportunity, and the dimension that wins is TAM—total addressable market—by an overwhelming margin. With 1,014 total units and 965 franchised locations, you’re looking at a real, distributed base of operators who need POS, scheduling, and marketing automation at scale. A La Mode Shoppes has two units, zero franchised, and an AUV of just $80,970. Even if you closed both locations, the deal size is negligible. Papa Murphy’s unit count gives you a repeatable land-and-expand motion across a franchise network, which is the only path to meaningful revenue in this vertical.

The terrain also tilts decisively toward Papa Murphy’s. Their approved-supplier procurement model means franchisees have some autonomy in vendor selection, so you can sell directly to owner-operators without needing to first win a rigid corporate mandate. A La Mode’s franchisor-controlled procurement locks you into a single-threaded, all-or-nothing sale to a tiny parent entity with minimal pull. Yes, Papa Murphy’s is in negative unit growth year-over-year, which is a real tradeoff—you’re selling into a shrinking footprint. But a 3.6% decline on a base of nearly a thousand franchised units still leaves a massive, churning installed base that needs replacement tools, compliance upgrades, and efficiency gains.

Budget is the tradeoff to watch. Papa Murphy’s higher investment range ($450K–$693K) and lower royalty (5%) suggest operators have slightly more margin headroom for software spend than A La Mode’s lower-investment, higher-royalty model. The risk is that declining comps could tighten that headroom over time. But right now, the sheer number of independently operated storefronts with vendor choice makes Papa Murphy’s the only brand on this list with a real pipeline.

Verdict: Papa Murphy’s is the clear pick—TAM and terrain outweigh negative growth, while A La Mode offers no scalable sales motion.