Product tour
A walk through everything AreaCacao can do for your workshop and the tool that solves each need.
AreaCacao brings into a single app the tasks that are usually scattered across notebooks, spreadsheets, and the chef's head: formulating, costing, digitizing recipes, and analyzing tastings. This tour shows you what each area does and when to reach for it.
What does AreaCacao solve?
- Design formulas with technical rigor, not by eye: macro balances, ranges by product type, and AI suggestions.
- Move your paper recipe book to digital without typing in every single quantity.
- Know how much each production run costs with an ingredient catalog and costing that's always up to date.
- Analyze your products like a professional panel: descriptive and discriminative tastings, shelf life, and reports.
How the app is organized
All the day-to-day work lives in a sidebar on the left. At the top, below the logo, are your account and the Create button; below them, from top to bottom, you'll find:
Dashboard
The first navigation item (house icon). It's your home screen: activity summary, credits, current plan, and shortcuts. It's covered in detail in Dashboard tour.
Formulation
The main work area. Its items, in order:
- My recipes — the list of all your recipes, with search and access to the editor.
- Filling formulator — design ganaches, caramels, pâtes de fruit, pralines, and truffles with AI help. It's the flagship tool.
- Chocolate formulator — works out the formula for your couverture or bar from your targets.
- Import recipes — turns a photo, a PDF, or a spreadsheet of recipes into structured recipe cards. Covered in the Import recipes guide.
- Ingredients — the catalog with the technical data sheets (macros, allergens, density) that feed your recipes.
- Supplies — packaging, labels, boxes, and other non-edible consumables, with their cost.
- Costs — the cost and profitability of each recipe, in line with your prices.
- Shared with me — recipes other people have shared with you.
The formulators, importing from a photo or PDF, and the cost assistant use credits from your plan; validating, costing, and saving don't use credits.
Sensory analysis
A section with three shortcuts: My evaluations (your tastings and studies), Panelists (the people on your panel), and New evaluation (opens the wizard to create a tasting). The module's other tools (training, protocols, attributes, batches, shelf life, sheets, and reports) live in the Sensory analysis hub. The module is part of the Pro plan: if your plan doesn't include it, you'll see these shortcuts marked Pro, and clicking them shows an invitation to upgrade instead of opening the tool.
Operations
Separated by a line, Operations opens the Operations panel, where you manage suppliers, purchases, inventory, production, and price tracking.
Recipes
At the bottom of the sidebar, the list of your most recent recipes, with search.
The Create button
Above the navigation there's a Create button with two options:
- New recipe — opens the What do you want to formulate? picker with three paths: recipe from scratch (a blank sheet), Filling formulator, or Chocolate formulator.
- New sensory evaluation — starts a new tasting.
Your account
Your name and avatar appear at the top of the sidebar. Clicking them opens the user menu with Settings, Support, and Log out. Right next to them, the notifications bell alerts you to anything that needs your attention. Your subscription isn't in that menu: you manage it in Settings → Subscription (see Subscription and billing).