Taking a Page from the Blueberry Playbook: Dragonberry’s Jumbo Longan

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Above Dragon's eye. The Vietnamese name for longan describes what is revealed when the leathery shell is opened - a translucent, fragrant flesh wrapped around a single dark seed.

Longan fruit is taking a page from the blueberry industry. The same way blueberries split into regular and jumbo and shoppers learned the difference fast, Vietnam’s longan is about to get a premium tier.

This summer, Dragonberry Produce will launch its jumbo Longan in American retail, the next chapter in the company’s effort to scale Vietnamese specialty fruits in the US market.

We're going to roll out a new variety of Longan, our jumbo Longan, this summer, just like the blueberry industry did with regular and jumbo blueberries.

Vietnamese longan has been part of Dragonberry’s import portfolio for years, the company scaling its supply chain in parallel to lychee. Today, Dragonberry brings longan from Vietnam to American consumers year-round, with one consistent gap, the two-week shutdown in Asia tied to Lunar New Year. Outside that window, the fruit moves continuously, and 2026 has seen greater supply than any year before.

The jumbo Longan launch is a deliberate retail move. The blueberry industry’s jumbo-and-standard split created a premium tier above the everyday product. Dragonberry is applying the same playbook to a tropical category that has never had it.

TIER 01 · TODAY

Standard Longan

TIER 02 · NEW

Jumbo Longan

"We see that there's a lot of growth opportunities in the Longan sector. By controlling the sizing and consistency of the product, we're helping some of our retailers really grow this sector."

But most American shoppers have never opened a longan. Dragonberry treats that as the marketing opportunity, not as a problem.

As a marketer, you can't assume that people know how to eat the fruit. We try to be very detail-oriented and thoughtful about our packaging to include this information."

The packaging carries instructions. The displays carry sampling. The story is the fruit itself, fragrant, translucent, intensely sweet, what Vietnamese tradition calls dragon’s eye. Once a shopper has tried it, they tend to come back.

What 2025 proved with lychee, 2026 is set to prove with longan: when the supply chain works, scale follows.

What's next on the horizon

That conviction is what Amy carried to Washington in February 2026, when she addressed Vietnam’s General Secretary Tô Lâm at the Peace Conference. (See: From Volume to Vision.) Longan is not the only fruit on the next horizon, passion fruit and guava are in the approval pipeline, but it is the closest to arrival.

Next on the horizon
APPROVAL PIPELINE · 2026 →
SUMMER 2026 · ARRIVING

Jumbo Longan

In Approval

Passion Fruit

In Approval

Guava

The blueberry playbook took years to play out. Dragonberry plans to compress the longan version.

The jumbo Longan lands this summer.

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