Homewood Suites by Hilton vs Papa Murphy's

Homewood Suites by Hilton wins on budget and timing, and that’s where the deal is for us right now. Each unit carries a minimum build cost north of $23 million—these aren’t franchisees pinching pennies on POS upgrades. When every property is franchised and expanding at 2.51% unit growth, each new hotel is a greenfield deployment ripe for a full-suite sale: scheduling, back-office, and guest-facing automation. The FDD is current, meaning no compliance fog, and the standards-based procurement forces owners into strict operational playbooks—our software becomes the tool they use to meet brand mandates. The royalty is a lean 3.5%, leaving margin on the table we can absorb into a tech stack upsell without franchisee pushback.

Papa Murphy’s wins on TAM and terrain—1,119 franchised doors is triple the footprint, and the approved-supplier model means we can slide in without a central mandate, selling direct to owners who already act autonomously on procurement. The AUV of $680K isn’t lush, but the $367K–$670K total investment band says these operators are small enough to feel acute pain from scheduling chaos and supply waste, making our value prop visceral. However, that 2.3% annual unit contraction is a flashing red light: we’d be selling into a shrinking base, spending cycles capturing wallet share as the fleet erodes. Compound that with a stale, overdue FDD, and we lose the predictable expansion pipeline that makes sustained demand gen work.

The tradeoff is trajectory over total doors. Homewood’s growth rate and per-unit budget dwarf Papa Murphy’s scale. We prioritize higher ACV, repeatable new-unit installs, and a brand actively opening properties over a larger but declining network where each sale is a one-shot rescue mission. Papa Murphy’s sheer unit count tempts volume, but declining units and low AUV make for a grinding, defensive sell. Homewood gives us a growth tailwind and the spending capacity to land multi-module, sticky deals.

Verdict: Homewood Suites by Hilton is the stronger opportunity—fewer units, far bigger checks, and a rising tide.