Barberitos vs Papa Murphy's

Papa Murphy’s is the stronger opportunity right now, and it’s not close. The dimension that wins is TAM—sheer addressable volume. With 965 franchised units against Barberitos’ 43, you’re looking at a 22x larger installed base to sell into. Even with negative unit growth of -3.6% YoY, the net contraction is a rounding error against that scale advantage. A single 10-location franchisee group inside Papa Murphy’s represents nearly a quarter of Barberitos’ entire system. When you’re selling software, deal count velocity matters more than unit-level economics, and 965 doors give you far more at-bats than 43.

The tradeoff is budget quality. Barberitos’ AUV of $1.14M suggests healthier per-store cash flow and potentially more willingness to invest in tech that drives revenue—your POS upsell modules, your marketing automation. Papa Murphy’s lower investment range ($450K–$693K) and leaner 5% royalty signal thinner operator margins, which means longer sales cycles and more pushback on per-seat pricing. But that’s a terrain problem you can solve with packaging—strip down the bundle, price for the segment, and let volume carry the revenue. You can’t fix a TAM that simply doesn’t exist.

Timing also tilts toward Papa Murphy’s. A contracting system creates urgency: franchisees losing foot traffic need operational efficiency and digital ordering to defend their top line. That’s a pain point your back-office and scheduling tools speak to directly. Barberitos, with flat unit counts and no disclosed growth, offers no such catalyst. You’d be selling into comfortable operators with little reason to rip out existing systems.

Verdict: Papa Murphy’s wins on TAM and timing despite weaker unit economics; 965 doors in need of efficiency gains beat 43 healthy ones every time.