Gordo's Bubble Waffles vs La Pino'z Pizza

Right now, the only winnable beachhead here is Gordo’s Bubble Waffles. The brand has two operating units and an approved-supplier procurement model. That combination gives you a live-sales target: franchisees (or the single entity behind those two units) can select their own POS, scheduling, and back-office stack without a franchisor mandate. Even a two-unit deal lights up real revenue, a reference case, and a path to land-and-expand as new franchisees come online. La Pino’z Pizza has zero units, zero franchisees, and zero sales surface—there’s nobody to pitch.

The terrain dimension is the bigger of the two advantages. Franchisor-controlled procurement at La Pino’z means that even if they start adding stores, every unit will be forced into a tech stack chosen at headquarters. You’d have to sell the entire franchisor on displacing whatever system they’ve locked in, and with no current operations, there’s no momentum to support that. Gordo’s open procurement model is a greenfield for third-party software, so you compete on merit, not on corporate mandates.

The tradeoff is scale but no access versus access but small scale. La Pino’z investment ceiling is nearly triple Gordo’s, but that’s meaningless if the terrain is sealed. Two units with open procurement beat zero units with a controlled gate—every time.

Verdict: Gordo’s Bubble Waffles is the stronger software-sales opportunity because it provides an immediate, sellable target with terrain that lets you win.