  The ultraviolet completion of flavour models can strongly improve the
predictivity of the respective effective models. We consider $A_4$ models,
existing minimal UV completions and construct several next-to-minimal UV
complete models. We compare the results of these possibilities to the
experimental data including $\theta_{13}$. Through the predictive power of the
UV completions, we are able to either rule out or constrain several minimal and
next-to-minimal alternatives.
