Steven Chen

About Me

Currently, Steven Chen serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Sweegen, an innovative full-service product developer reimagining the world of wellness by pioneering exciting new food and beverage technologies and innovations. The company is hard at work developing groundbreaking solutions to help food and beverage manufacturers reduce sugar in their products and create a new generation of better-for-you products that taste delicious.

With in-market innovations such as Sweegen’s next-generation stevia sweeteners, such as Bestevia® Rebs M, D, E and others, along with a robust pipeline of new solutions like the protein-based sweetener brazzein, Chen’s entrepreneurial expertise has provided the food and beverage industry with high quality, competitively-priced modern solutions to respond to one of its most urgent challenges – excess global consumption of sugar.

Chen lends his decades of business experience to operations at Sweegen and knows how to inspire his team to work toward its commitments and mission to improve global health through better food. Sweegen's culture of excellence is largely due to Chen's ability to both celebrate company accomplishments and stay curious about how the company can continue to grow, improve, and innovate. His relentless focus on customer needs and designing Sweegen to be nimble and responsive to those needs is core to the growth and success of Sweegen.

As the CEO of Sweegen, Steven Chen has led the company’s expansion from a start-up in North America, to a global player with locations in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. He founded the company in January 2015, and has since worked tirelessly to disrupt the natural sweetener and flavor industry in a way that positively serves both the food and beverage industry, and its consumers.

Chen and his team are committed to 6 distinct dimensions at Sweegen, each informing how the business works to support wellness in the food and beverage industry:

Physical: Sweegen believes in providing products that help consumers lead healthier physical lives that encompass healthy nutrition.

Intellectual: Problem-solving and creativity are at the core of Sweegen's innovation, and the company works to ensure that it's working as creatively as possible to provide the wellness world with unique, modern solutions for tough industry challenges.

Sensory: Food should taste great, and Sweegen works to create complete solutions leveraging product development expertise, local market knowledge, and Sweegen’s proprietary portfolio of nature–based sweeteners and flavors. Sweegen's better-for-you ingredients and inspirational concepts allow consumers to enjoy many of the same tastes and textures they would get from a standard, full sugar food product, but include a better health profile.

Social: Food, family, and friends go hand-in-hand. Sweegen recognizes the social importance of food and works to create products that bring people together, no matter what their dietary needs.

Community: Sweegen creates products and opportunities with community in mind, keeping a focus on working in a way that allows people to feel connected to a greater good.

Environmental: Sweegen was created with the reduction of the environmental footprint of sweetness in mind. The company works to develop innovative production processes that positively affect the environment and respect the Earth's natural resources.

Steven Chen and Sweegen's Innovations

Steven Chen Sweegen CEO empowers his team of industry Taste Blazers in creating a new ecosystem of ingredient innovations that fuel the forward motion of a global improvement in the health profile of food and beverage products. 

Innovations at Sweegen include:

Signature Bestevia® Sweetness: Sweegen’s proprietary bioconversion process makes delicious, zero-calorie sweetness from nature a reality. With the widest range of stevia sweeteners available to the food and beverage industry such as Rebs M, D, E, I and N, along with many more, Sweegen offers label-friendly, globally approved, zero-calorie sweetness options to make it easier for companies to create products that meet the needs of their customers.

Taste Modulation: When creating healthy alternatives, it can be tough to develop a great taste that consumers will love while also respecting the nutritional profiles they want. Sugar works to mask other tastes (such as bitterness), and when sugar is absent from a product, it can be hard to deliver a high-quality taste experience. Steven Chen and his Sweegen product development team work to modulate tastes in a variety of unique ways, including:

Bitter Blocking: In 2021, Sweegen introduced the first natural bitter blocker that was able to block multiple bitterants, including the most challenging of bitterants, caffeine. People have over 25 known bitter receptors, which makes product formulation with many better-for-you ingredients very challenging. Chen’s team tackles this problem with new flavors that reduce the taste of bitterants and other functional ingredients that arise when you create health and wellness products, especially when you reduce sugar.

Sweetness Enhancement: With a wide range of stevia-based and non-stevia-based flavors, this area of innovation enables greater flexibility to brands that are looking to improve the health profile of their sugar sweetened portfolio. 

Linger Control: Many consumers of low-sugar and sugar-free products complain of an aftertaste associated with sweeteners. Sweegen's innovative methods control lingering tastes, creating reduced and no-sugar products with no aftertaste.

Reduction of Astringency: Rebalances food and beverage products with reduced sugar to provide the right amount of acidity and sweetness to deliver a great taste.

Improvement of Mouthfeel: Wellness enthusiasts know the feeling of biting into a low- or no-sugar treat and experiencing a poor texture all too well. Sweegen works to help correct texture issues with wellness foods. It's important that customers recognize textures in low-sugar and sugar-free foods as similar to textures of standard sugar-sweetened fare. Sweegen works to create sweeteners that can be used to develop products nearly indistinguishable from those made with standard sugar.

Career History

Currently known for his industry-shaking work at Sweegen, Steven Chen isn't a newcomer to the business world. Sweegen is Chen's fifth company, and he's been a disruptor in the biotechnology sector for more than two decades.

As a business founder and leader, Chen knows what it takes to motivate a team and move a company forward, and he's proud to bring his years of knowledge and expertise to Sweegen.

Professional Skills and Experience

Steven Chen of Sweegen is known for his industry expertise and is praised for his superior skill level in many professional areas, including:

New Business Development

Business Strategy

Research and Development

Sales Development

Marketing Strategy

Entrepreneurship

Product Development

Strategic Planning

Cross-Functional Team Leadership

Negotiation

Management

Team Building