Champs Chicken vs Papa Murphy's

Papa Murphy’s gives you a larger addressable base right now—965 franchised units versus Champs Chicken’s 397. That’s a 2.4x TAM advantage, and in a declining unit-count environment, every installed seat counts. The investment range also signals a materially higher per-location budget: Papa Murphy’s franchisees are committing $450K–$693K upfront, which correlates with operators who can afford a real tech stack, not just a barebones POS. Champs Chicken’s entry point is absurdly low ($9K on the low end), which screams kiosk-in-a-gas-station economics—tight margins, minimal back-office complexity, and little appetite for layered software.

The tradeoff is unit growth. Champs Chicken is shrinking at just -0.75% annually, while Papa Murphy’s is bleeding units at -3.6%. That’s a timing risk: you’re selling into a network that’s contracting nearly five times faster. But software vendors don’t get paid on franchisee growth rates—they get paid on seat count and willingness to spend. Papa Murphy’s also carries a 5% royalty and 2% ad fund, which means franchisees are already conditioned to write regular checks to the brand; layering on a software fee is a smaller psychological leap than inside a zero-royalty, ultra-lean concept like Champs Chicken.

Terrain seals it. Both use an approved-supplier procurement model, so neither locks you out of integration paths, but Papa Murphy’s take-and-bake model demands scheduling, production planning, and marketing automation that map directly to your product suite. Champs Chicken’s operational complexity is minimal by comparison. The bigger, better-funded, more complex operator base wins despite the steeper unit decline.

Verdict: Papa Murphy’s is the stronger software-sales opportunity—larger TAM, higher per-unit budget, and operational complexity that aligns with your product, outweighing its faster unit contraction.