New pastries and some festive chocolates are featured alongside old faves in Beta5 Chocolates’ new space.
It’s been a long time coming, but the award-winning Beta5 Chocolates (413 Industrial Avenue) has finally opened its new location—right next door, at 409 Industrial Avenue. The artisan chocolate shop is known for its inventive confections and signature line of cream puffs that are offered in rotating, seasonal flavours.
The 16-seat, 900-square-foot space is a far cry from the original retail establishment. For starters, guests will be able to sit down and enjoy their treats, and the new beverage program will offer 49th Parallel coffee as well as mocha and hot chocolate made with Beta5’s own chocolates.
A highlight of the new café (which they call Beta5 V2.0) is an expansive, L-shaped refrigerated glass countertop/display case that houses all the goods: chocolates, cream puffs, and custom pastries. Unlike in the old retail space, customers can now ogle the droolworthy and photogenic sweets.
Colourful Bocci lights hang from the ceiling, complemented by a pastelcoloured polygon mural by artist Scott Sueme.
“We’ve had them [Bocci lights] for seven years in our lunchroom next door,” Adam Chandler, owner and pastry chef at Beta5 Chocolates, told the Straight during an interview in the new establishment. “Now we can kind of show them off properly after they’ve been hiding upstairs for so long.”
Chandler and partner Jessica Rosinski have been on the hunt for a new space for the past few years because the retail storefront was never meant to be a permanent, customerfacing location.
“This was an opportunity for us to really think through what we want the customers’ experience to be, how we want to interact with them, how we want them to interact with the product,” Chandler explained.
The opening of the new space comes just ahead of the holiday season, which means new holiday cream-puff flavours like strawberrymilk tea, pavlova, and matcha-sesame will be in stock.
“We’re excited to give people space to come in and sit down and sort of enjoy what we’ve created with the food, the space, and also the experience with that,” Chandler added. “I think that’s the big thing for me. It feels like Beta5 is a little bit more grown-up now.”