D.P. Dough vs Papa Murphy's

D.P. Dough walks with a structural advantage Papa Murphy’s can’t match: terrain. The approved-supplier model at Papa Murphy’s locks down procurement, which limits how freely franchisees can adopt third-party software that touches inventory, supply chain, or vendor integrations. D.P. Dough’s open procurement posture removes that friction entirely, giving your platform a wider on-ramp into daily ops—especially back-office and marketing automation use cases that rely on flexible data flows. Papa Murphy’s 965 franchised units and higher investment band suggest more wallet, but that budget is walled off if the corporate supply chain apparatus resists outside software.

Papa Murphy’s looks tempting on TAM—the unit count and investment range signal a larger aggregate spend pool—but the -3.6% unit contraction and tight procurement push the timing and terrain vectors firmly the other way. Selling into a shrinking franchise system with rigid vendor controls means your deal cycles stretch and your attach rate suffers. D.P. Dough’s smaller footprint becomes a virtue here: fewer doors, but each one is a cleaner sale with higher velocity and fewer procurement gatekeepers. The tradeoff is TAM versus sales efficiency, and in a quick-service vertical where time-to-revenue matters, efficiency wins.

Verdict: D.P. Dough is the stronger immediate opportunity because open procurement collapses sales friction, even against a larger but contracting and controlled competitor.