Diem Fuggersberger
Creative Entrepreneur, Alchemist & Storyteller
Diem Kieu Fuggersberger, award winning creative entrepreneur, flavour alchemist & storyteller. Diem is the founder of Coco & Lucas+ Co-Founder & CEO Berger Ingredients.
Diem was recently awarded the prestigious Optus Businesswoman of the Year award. Her success is a testament to her hard work and creative vision.
Arriving in Australia as a child refugee from Vietnam, with no belongings, no home, and no English, Diem has risen from challenging beginnings to be a proud, passionate and values driven businesswoman. As co-founding CEO of Berger Ingredients, Diem and her husband Werner have built a multi-million dollar food-manufacturing business, taking it from its early beginnings as a supplier of meat marinades, spices and flavour concepts, to a manufacturer of nationally distributed fresh sauces, muesli and ready made meals. Berger Ingredients is now the supplier behind brands such as Sonoma, Peppercorn, Primo Smallgoods, Cordina Chickens, and Emily Dupuche; as well as the home brands of major supermarkets including Coles, Woolworths and Aldi.
Diem has been the driving force behind the factory operations, embedding her ancestral values and family traditions in the flavour concepts and artisan home style methods of production; as well as ensuring the highest levels of quality assurance, ethics and social consciousness throughout the business operations.
Diem is passionate about supplying Australian sourced, nutritiously balanced, sustainably packaged food into Australian households, and has recently realised her dream to launch her own food range representing these values. Coco and Lucas’ Kitchen is Australia’s first junior foodie range of deliciously healthy pre made meals for 3 to 12 year olds and is soon to launch through About Life and Drakes stores, with her vision to see the brand distributed through over 2000 supermarkets nationally.Berger Ingredients has built its reputation on a foundation of trust and respectful relationships with people – the customers, suppliers and staff as well as the Australian food producers from whom the ingredients are sourced. With this in place, Diem knows any obstacle can be overcome and is ready to conquer her vision – whatever the squiggly line she has to take to get there!
