Buffalo's Cafe vs Papa Murphy's

Papa Murphy’s is the stronger opportunity by a wide margin, and the decisive dimension is TAM. With 965 franchised units against Buffalo’s Cafe’s 12, the total addressable market is two orders of magnitude larger. Even if Papa Murphy’s average unit volume sits well below Buffalo’s $2.35M, the aggregate system revenue across 965 locations dwarfs anything a 12-unit chain can generate. For a software vendor selling per-seat or per-location licenses, that unit count translates directly into a scalable pipeline. A 12-unit deal, no matter how high the AUV, caps your total contract value and makes every sales cycle a high-stakes, one-off negotiation with no room for expansion.

The meaningful tradeoff is budget depth versus market breadth. Buffalo’s Cafe franchisees operate at a higher investment threshold ($857K–$2.9M) and pull in more revenue per store, so they likely have fatter technology budgets per location. But that per-unit advantage evaporates when you multiply it across the chain: you’re chasing a handful of well-heeled owners while ignoring a 965-unit base where even a modest per-store software spend yields a much larger total contract. Moreover, both brands are shrinking, but Papa Murphy’s slower decline (-3.6% vs -7.7%) means a more stable installed base that will keep renewing, and its national footprint lets you pursue a corporate-endorsed rollout or an approved-vendor listing that unlocks the entire system at once. Buffalo’s regional, tiny footprint offers no such terrain leverage.

Verdict: Papa Murphy’s is the stronger software-sales opportunity right now.