Culver's Restaurant vs Papa Murphy's

Culver’s is the stronger software-sales opportunity right now, and the decisive dimension is timing. Brand A’s filing is current, but the real signal is what’s absent: no disclosed unit decline, no shrinking franchised base, and no red flags in the data that suggest a system in contraction. For a vendor selling POS, scheduling, or back-office tools, the worst time to invest sales effort is when franchisees are closing locations or tightening spend. Papa Murphy’s -3.6% year-over-year unit loss and 965 remaining franchised units scream churn risk. Even if the royalty and ad fund structures are identical, a shrinking TAM means every deal costs more to win and renewals face higher attrition. Culver’s, by contrast, offers a stable or growing footprint where new-unit openings and healthy existing operators create natural software buying cycles.

The tradeoff is that Papa Murphy’s approved-supplier procurement model is technically more vendor-friendly than a closed or corporate-mandated stack, but that terrain advantage is hollow when the total addressable market is actively eroding. A 1,014-unit system losing 3.6% annually will shed roughly 35 locations this year alone, and franchisees in a declining network delay technology upgrades, squeeze budgets, and blame external factors. Culver’s may have a tighter procurement gate, but a stable or expanding unit base means more net-new store implementations, more competitive displacements during refreshes, and a larger pool of operators who can actually fund a software purchase. Budget and TAM both tilt toward the brand that isn’t bleeding locations.

Verdict: Culver’s wins on timing and TAM stability, making it the safer, higher-volume software target despite any procurement friction.