Beggars Pizza vs Papa Murphy's

Papa Murphy’s gives you volume and budget certainty. With 965 franchised units—46x the addressable base of Beggars—your TAM isn’t hypothetical. The tighter investment band ($450K–$693K) and a current FDD signal operators who are funded, compliant, and still spending on infrastructure despite top-line shrinkage. A 2% ad fund means every location has a built-in marketing operations layer your automation plugs into, and the sheer footprint forces a multi-unit owner mentality that demands centralized scheduling and back-office tools. The -3.6% unit loss is a headwind, but it also creates urgency: franchisees who stay are consolidating, standardizing, and cutting labor—all software-buying triggers.

Beggars wins on stability (flat growth beats contraction) but loses on scale and timing. Twenty-one franchised units don’t support a dedicated sales motion, and a stale, soon-due FDD tells you corporate is in paperwork triage, not tech evaluation. The wide investment spread means operators range from shoestring to well-capitalized, making a uniform value proposition impossible. You’d spend as much time qualifying a lead as you would closing a seven-unit deal inside Papa Murphy’s system.

The tradeoff is depth versus surface area. Beggars keeps you safe from churn risk; Papa Murphy’s hands you an install base large enough that even a shrinking pie has more slices than Beggars’ entire plate. In a seat-based or per-location SaaS model, volume wins.

Verdict: Papa Murphy’s is the stronger target—its sheer franchise count, budget clarity, and operational pain from contraction make it a faster path to meaningful ACV despite negative unit growth.