Early Access — Invitation Only

Built in a working
production kitchen.
By a chocolatier,
for chocolatiers.

Production and inventory management software built to the standard that serious chocolate making actually requires.

Request early access

We review each request personally.

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The reality of running a chocolate operation

You've built a serious operation.
Your software hasn't kept up.

Every artisan chocolatier we've spoken to is solving the same four problems with spreadsheets, clipboards, and manual Shopify updates.

📊
Recipes live in spreadsheets
Your ganache formulas are in Excel. Batch scaling is manual. When ingredient costs change, you're recalculating margins by hand. No software understands infusion sub-processes or semi-finished product chains the way a working chocolatier does.
I have 12 versions of the same ganache spreadsheet.
📦
Inventory is a black box
You know roughly how much Valrhona you have. You don't know your actual landed cost per gram, how much is allocated to open runs, or when you'll run short on packaging before it becomes a production problem.
I find out we're out of cocoa butter when someone checks the shelf.
📋
The kitchen runs on paper
Production teams use printed run sheets. Temperature checks are logged on clipboards. Ingredient sign-offs are verbal. There's no record of what actually happened during a run — which makes quality issues nearly impossible to trace.
If something goes wrong, we have no idea what step it was.
🛍️
Shopify doesn't know what the kitchen made
When a production run completes, someone manually updates Shopify inventory. When assembly runs happen — rebundling, repacking — the transform isn't tracked at all. Stock counts drift. Overselling happens.
We oversold a box set because Shopify still showed old stock.
How form5. works

One platform. Three layers.
Built around how you actually work.

form5. connects your recipe library, your production floor, and your Shopify store into a single system — with no manual data transfer between any of them.

01 — Admin
Your operations centre
The desktop interface where everything is set up and managed. Recipes, ingredients, suppliers, invoices, production planning, Shopify settings — all in one place, all connected.
  • Recipe builder with full BOM + infusion groups
  • Ingredient, consumable & packaging ledgers
  • AI invoice extraction via Claude vision
  • Production planner with BOM explosion
  • Shopify & Xero integration
02 — Kitchen Tablet
Your production floor
A touch-optimised app for your production team. Step-by-step procedure confirmations, temperature validation, ingredient check-off — all logged in real time, tied to the run record.
  • Step-by-step run view with procedure steps
  • Temperature confirmation blocks
  • Per-ingredient sign-off with quantities
  • PIN-based team authentication
  • Excess component capture
03 — Everything connected
No more manual syncing
When a production run completes, Shopify inventory updates automatically. COGS flow to Xero. Supplier invoices are processed by AI and matched to your ingredient records.
  • Shopify inventory sync on run completion
  • Assembly run transforms (SKU → SKU)
  • Xero invoice push as AP bills
  • Real COGS per gram, per bonbon
  • Full per-org data isolation
Recipe Engine

Your formulas, finally
behaving like formulas.

form5. understands how chocolate recipes actually work — infusion sub-processes, semi-finished product chains, yield math, and the landed cost that flows through every ingredient.

🍃
Infusion groups
Steeping cream in lavender, tea, or spice? The infusion sub-process is a first-class ingredient group. Yield weight, strained output, cost — all calculated correctly and kept separate from the main BOM cost.
🔗
Semi-finished chains
Speculoos Cookie → Cookie Butter → Praline. Each stage has its own recipe, its own production run, its own inventory balance. The production planner traverses the full chain automatically and nests runs in the right order.
💰
Real COGS per gram
Landed ingredient cost — from actual purchase invoices — flows through every recipe. You see actual cost per bonbon before you run a single batch. When ingredient prices change, every recipe updates.
📐
Procedure steps built in
Every recipe has numbered procedure steps with temperature targets and technique notes. The kitchen tablet walks your team through them. Use the template library or write your own — step by step, standardised.
Live example — Lavender Honey Ganache
Bill of Materials Yield: 820g  ·  $1.73/100g
Lavender Infusion  infusion group → 310g strained cream
35% cream
340g
$1.19
Dried lavender buds
18g
$0.62
↳ Strained lavender cream YIELD
310g
—
Ungrouped ingredients
Valrhona Manjari 64%
320g
$8.96
Cultured butter
110g
$1.43
Wildflower honey
90g
$1.98
Total batch cost $14.18  ·  $1.73/100g
Kitchen Tablet App

Your production team,
finally on the same page.

A dedicated, touch-optimised app for the kitchen. Your team works through each run step by step — and everything is logged, timestamped, and tied to the production record.

01
Step-by-step procedure runs
Every recipe has numbered procedure steps. The tablet walks your team through each one. No ambiguity about technique, timing, or sequence — for your recipe, scaled to today's batch.
02
Temperature confirmations that block progression
Steps requiring temperature validation show an amber confirmation block. The team records the actual reading before they can continue. Logged with a timestamp — invaluable when something goes wrong later.
03
Per-ingredient sign-off
Each ingredient is checked off as it goes in. Quantities shown scaled to the exact batch. Nothing gets double-added or missed — and the record shows who added what, and when.
04
PIN-based team auth, separate from admin
Kitchen staff log in with a shop code and PIN. No admin access, no passwords to manage. The tablet stays logged in during a shift. Completely separate from the admin interface.
Dark Chocolate Shell
Step 3 of 6
Tempering — working temperature
Melt couverture to 50°C, cool on marble slab to 27°C, work back up to working temperature.
Confirm working temperature before moulding. Do not proceed if reading is below target.
Target: 31–32°C
31.4°C ✓
Ingredients — batch scaled to 620 pieces
Valrhona Caraïbe 66%1,240g
Cocoa butter80g
Mycryo13g
Confirm & Continue →
Inventory & COGS

Know your actual margins.
Not your estimated ones.

Real landed cost — from actual purchase invoices — flows through every recipe. When ingredient prices change, every product's margin updates automatically.

Raw ingredients from actual invoices
Every invoice updates your ingredient inventory. Landed cost per gram is calculated from real purchase prices — not averages, not estimates. AI vision reads the invoice photo and matches line items automatically.
Consumables & packaging tracked separately
Boxes, inserts, ribbon, tissue — all tracked as their own ledgers. Packaging cost per unit flows directly into your finished product COGS. Finally see what the box actually costs per bonbon.
Semi-finished components with their own inventory
Ganache batches, praline, caramel — stored between runs with their own balance. The production planner knows exactly what you have and nets it against what your next run needs.
Shopify COGS synced on every run
When a production run completes, form5. pushes the COGS per unit to Shopify. Your margin reporting in Shopify reflects actual production cost — not a manually entered estimate from months ago.
Example — 24-piece assorted box
COGS breakdown Per unit · 24 pieces
Dark chocolate shell (24 cavities)
$3.84
Lavender honey ganache fill
$1.92
Raspberry jelly fill
$1.44
Speculoos praline fill
$2.16
Gift box + insert
$2.80
Ribbon + tissue paper
$0.65
Total COGS / unit
$12.81
Retail at $48.00 → 73.3% gross margin. Actual. Not a guess. And when your Valrhona price goes up, every recipe that uses it updates automatically.
Shopify Integration

Production completes.
Shopify updates. Done.

No spreadsheet. No manual entry. When your team marks a run complete on the kitchen tablet, Shopify inventory updates within seconds.

🍫
Run completes in form5.
Team marks complete on kitchen tablet. Pieces, components, excess — all recorded.
→
⚙️
Adjustments calculated
form5. calculates units to add per SKU based on run output and mold config.
→
🛍️
Shopify updated via API
Per-org OAuth. Per-SKU inventory adjustment pushed via REST Admin API.
→
📊
COGS synced to Shopify
Actual production cost per unit pushed alongside inventory — margin reporting stays accurate.
Assembly runs (SKU → SKU transforms)
Rebundling individual bonbons into a gift set? Assembly runs track the transform and push both sides to Shopify — stock down on components, up on the bundle.
Xero integration
Push supplier invoices to Xero as Accounts Payable bills. OAuth-connected, account codes mapped. Your bookkeeper gets accurate bills without manual data entry.
Sync retry tracking
If a Shopify sync fails, it retries automatically. Status is visible on every production run — pending, synced, or failed — with a manual retry option on the record.
Pricing — Early Access

Priced for the operation
you're running today.

Early access rates are locked in for the lifetime of your account. When we open broadly, pricing increases. These rates are only available to operations we onboard personally before general availability.

 
Starter
$99/mo
Solo operator or small team
  • Recipe management & COGS
  • Ingredient inventory
  • Invoice management
  • Shopify inventory sync
Production module not included
Most Popular
Studio
$199/mo
Small production team, 1–10 staff
  • Everything in Starter
  • Production runs + kitchen tablet
  • Procedure steps & confirmations
  • Production planner (BOM explosion)
  • AI invoice extraction
  • Xero accounting integration
 
Atelier
$349/mo
Established operation, 5–20 staff
  • Everything in Studio
  • AI recipe formulator
  • Assembly runs (SKU transforms)
  • Quality pulls & inventory counts
  • Unlimited team members
  • White-glove onboarding
Annual plans at 2 months free.  ·  Early access rates are locked in permanently. Pricing increases on general availability.
Early Access
Early Access

What you're getting into.

What you get
Direct access to the founder
Questions about setup, edge cases in your workflow, features you need — Adam responds directly. Not a support ticket queue.
White-glove onboarding — all tiers, early access only
We'll set up your first recipes, ingredient records, and production runs together. Your operation mapped into form5. before you go solo — regardless of which tier you're on.
Early access pricing, locked in permanently
Your rate stays at the early access tier as long as you're a customer. When pricing increases on general availability, you're grandfathered in at your original rate.
Real influence over what gets built next
Early adopters shape the product. If your operation needs something, we want to know. That feedback goes directly into the roadmap — not into a feature request bucket.
What we're asking for
🗣️
Honest feedback
Tell us when something doesn't work for your operation. Your workflow is the product spec. We need to know where form5. doesn't fit — not just where it does.
⏱️
Real use — not a trial
We're looking for operations that will run form5. in production, not kick the tyres for a week. The product improves on real data from real kitchens.
📅
A 30-day commitment to get started
It takes a few weeks to get your recipes and ingredients set up properly. We ask for a genuine 30-day run before you decide if it's right for your operation.
🤝
A peer conversation if it fits
If form5. works for you, we'd love to point to your operation as an example. No pressure — you control what we say and how. We'll always ask before attributing anything.
Who built this

form5. was built at Beta5 Chocolates in Vancouver. Not in a startup incubator. Not by a software team that visited a few chocolate shops. In a working kitchen, by the person running it — over fifteen years of production.

Every feature exists because we needed it ourselves. Infusion sub-processes, because we make ganaches that require them. Semi-finished product chains, because our Speculoos praline takes three production stages. Real COGS, because we needed to know our actual margins before scaling a product line. The kitchen tablet, because our team needed something they could actually use during a run.

This is what "built by a chocolatier" means. Not a marketing phrase. The software you're reading about is what runs Beta5's kitchen, today, for every production run we do.

Adam Chandler  ·  Founder, form5.  ·  Owner, Beta5 Chocolates
beta5chocolates.com  ·  Est. 2010  ·  Vancouver, BC
15
Years in operation
The domain expertise that built form5. took 15 years to accumulate. It's embedded in the product.
100%
Of production runs through form5.
Every run at Beta5 goes through the kitchen tablet. This is not a demo environment.
8/10
Security audit score
Three independent review cycles. All critical and high findings resolved. Multi-tenant from day one.

If this sounds like the tool
you've been waiting for,
we'd like to hear about your operation.

form5labs.com

Request early access — we review each one personally.

Request early access
Adam Chandler  ·  adam@beta5chocolates.com
Beta5 Chocolates  ·  Vancouver, BC
Early access pricing: $99 / $199 / $349 per month · Locked in for the lifetime of your account.