Taco Rico or Taco Works vs Papa Murphy's

Papa Murphy’s gives us the bigger total addressable market by a mile—1,014 units, 965 of them franchised, means a deep bench of prospects who all operate under the same tech stack constraints. That approved-supplier procurement model is the real unlock: it signals centralized purchasing power and a mandate to standardize, so a single corporate-level win or a handful of multi-unit franchisee deals can cascade into dozens of seats. The tradeoff is negative unit growth. We’re selling into a shrinking base, which puts a hard ceiling on expansion revenue and means every lost unit is a churn event we can’t backfill.

Taco Rico/Taco Works is the momentum play. Fifty-seven percent unit growth off a tiny base tells us the concept is catching fire, and $1.29M AUV with a leaner investment range means franchisees have both the cash flow and the appetite to invest in systems that help them scale operations. The standards-based procurement model is a double-edged sword: it gives individual owners more autonomy to buy our software without corporate gatekeeping, but it also means no top-down mandate to force adoption. We’d have to win unit by unit, which is slower and costlier to sell.

The meaningful tradeoff is TAM versus timing. Papa Murphy’s offers a large, consolidated target with a procurement model that favors vendor lock-in, but we’re boarding a ship that’s taking on water. Taco Rico gives us a small, fast-growing base with high per-unit economics and an open buying process, but no centralized lever to pull. Right now, the approved-supplier advantage at Papa Murphy’s converts more reliably into booked revenue, even with the contraction risk.

Verdict: Papa Murphy’s is the stronger software-sales opportunity today because its centralized procurement model turns a massive franchise base into a force-multiplied pipeline, despite negative unit growth.