Crepe Delicious vs Papa Murphy's

Papa Murphy’s is the stronger opportunity right now, and it’s not close. The dimension that wins is TAM: 965 franchised units versus 10 gives you a real pipeline, not a rounding error. Even with a -3.6% unit decline, you’re still looking at a base of nearly a thousand operators who need POS, scheduling, and back-office tools. At that scale, churn and replacement cycles alone generate more qualified leads in a quarter than Crepe Delicious’s entire system will produce in a year. The royalty and ad fund are lower, which means slightly more operator margin to absorb a software investment, but the volume is the argument—you can’t build a repeatable outbound motion on 10 accounts.

The tradeoff is timing and terrain. Crepe Delicious is in growth mode, and if you catch them early, you could become the de facto standard as they scale. But “could” is doing a lot of work for a brand with 11 total units and an investment range that tops out over $1.1M—that’s a tough unit economics story for rapid expansion. Papa Murphy’s is shrinking, which means operators are under pressure to cut costs and improve efficiency. That’s your wedge: sell labor savings and margin protection into a system that’s fighting for survival. The procurement model is the same for both (approved supplier), so no terrain advantage either way. You take the shrinking giant with a thousand doors over the tiny upstart every time.

Verdict: Papa Murphy’s wins on TAM and urgency; the unit decline is a feature, not a bug, for a vendor selling operational efficiency.