In summer of 2025, Amy Nguyen sat across from host Lina to tell a story that runs in two directions at once.
The Vietnam-to-America side: how lychee, dragon fruit, longan, mango, rambutan, star apple, coconut, and pomelo have become Vietnamese exports approved for the United States, the world’s second-largest market for Vietnamese fruit, behind only China. Vietnam-US fruit and vegetable exports reached $360 million in 2024 alone.
The America-to-Vietnam side: what Vietnamese growers need to understand about the most demanding produce market they will ever sell into.
Joining Nguyen on the program was Tran Minh Thang, director of trade promotion at Vietnam’s Viet Trade agency. The two had first met in 2019. By 2020, Thang had proposed bringing Vietnamese lychee into the US market through Dragonberry. Five years later, the fruit was on Costco shelves in two countries.
Across forty-five minutes, Nguyen walked the Vietnamese audience through the work that made the import program real. Bắc Giang’s lychee orchards, now under Global G.A.P. standards and 30-year farming families like Phan Thị’s, who recently converted hectares to export-grade certification.
What the typical Vietnamese fruit goes through to enter the US, the program’s narrator explained, is “almost like getting a passport”.
The five stamps in the passport are: growing-area code, packing-facility code, irradiation treatment, phytosanitary certificate, and traceability label. Dragonberry’s job is to make that passport easier to obtain.
The closing of the conversation captured what is at stake for Nguyen personally.
What lands in a fruit basket abroad, the program’s narrator said in his closing line, carries with it the sweat of farmers, the insight of policy makers, and the passion of entrepreneurs.
The conversation was Amy Nguyen explaining all three.
→ Watch the full 45-minute interview on the About page.
