From Lebanon’s war zone to S’pore shelves: Why this 28 Y/O won’t let conflict kill her traditional olive oil biz

Alia Ballout is bringing centuries-old family traditions to Singapore through Beît Ballout

When Alia Ballout registered a company in Jan 2023, she didn’t know what it would sell.

But a year later, she launched what she describes as Singapore’s first traditional olive oil brand—sourcing produce from her family’s grove in southern Lebanon, air-freighting it to Singapore, and bottling it locally by hand.

Today, the 28-year-old runs Beît Ballout while managing operations across Singapore and the Middle East, where her family continues to spend time between Oman and Lebanon.

We spoke with Alia to learn more about building a traditional olive oil business, and the challenges of operating across regions with ongoing instability.

Turning heritage into a business

Born in Singapore, Alia is the daughter of Mae Lam, a Singaporean Chinese, and Adib Ballout, a Lebanese.

She spent most of her childhood in Oman before moving to the UK, and later relocating to Singapore at 19, where she is currently based.

In 2021, she enrolled in a Juris Doctor programme at Singapore Management University (SMU). While she completed her degree, she found herself increasingly disillusioned with the environment and began considering alternative paths.

A corporate law lecture on company formation eventually prompted her to register a business in early 2023, despite not having a clear product direction at the time.

After graduating, she took on roles in both the legal field and hospitality, including a stint at Mondrian Hotel. Through conversations with chefs and industry professionals, she gained exposure to supply chains and import-export processes.

The idea for Beît Ballout eventually emerged later that year during a routine video call with her mother. She appeared on screen in Lebanon, sun-hatted, basket in hand, picking olives from their grove. Alia stared at the image—an Asian woman harvesting olives in the Lebanon—and felt something stir up in her heart.

“I looked at her enjoying herself so much,” Alia recalled. “I was like, that’s such a weird image. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.”

The Ballouts had always held a piece of land with hundreds of olive trees in their backyard. They would return every few months to spend time in their home. The Ballouts would also often pick olives to make olive oil as a yearly family tradition, and if there’s any excess, they would then be given to friends and neighbours.

Spotting an opportunity to bring the family tradition to Singapore, Alia asked her father to ship a canister of Lebanese olive oil on credit, as she did not have any capital at the time. She then created a website for the company, naming it Beît Ballout, which means “House of Ballout” in Lebanese.

Building a brand from scratch

Alia started small—purchasing a handful of S$5 glass bottles from Scoop, which were all she could afford then, and filled them with her family’s Lebanese olive oil. She photographed the bottles and posted them on her private Instagram account, which had around 200 followers.

She had no expectations for the post, so the positive response caught her by surprise. “People were interested because it was such an odd thing to do, and because it came from me.”

From then, Alia primarily began selling her Lebanese olive oil through her website.

Because her initial packaging was modest, Alia had to be creative in promoting the product. “The ugly bottle design forced me to sell the heck out of my product,” she said. “I believed strongly in the quality. I needed to show its value.”

In the early years, she balanced running the business with full-time work at law firms, spending weekdays at the firms and weekends at pop-ups such as Sprout, Crane Living, and eventually the Boutique Fair.

“When I first started pop-ups, I didn’t realise that all they sell you is space. I had to get creative and set up everything by myself”

At these events, she often stood for 12 hours a day, engaging with customers, offering tastings, and addressing sceptics. She also managed marketing and design for Beît Ballout. This consistent, hands-on approach gradually built recognition for the brand in Singapore.

As demand grew, she eventually left her job in Dec last year to run Beît Ballout full-time. Although she had also recently passed the bar, she chose to pursue the business instead.

“This year, it’s gonna be my third time back at Boutique Fair. Customers who knew me from this, they kind of grew up with me, and the brand.”

A method that dates back centuries

A key part of the brand’s appeal lies in the Ballout family’s ancestral method of harvesting and pressing olives by hand, a practice that dates back centuries.

The Ballouts hand-pick olives—primarily Baladi olives, a variety native to the region and common in Palestine—from nearly 500 trees in their grove in Houmine El Tahta.

Harvesting takes place after the first rainfall, around Oct each year. The olives are then brought to a communal messara, or pressing plant, where a granite wheel—used in the Levant for centuries—crushes them. The fresh olives are cold-pressed at 27°C within four to six hours of picking.

The result is a rich, green, opaque oil—buttery yet fruity—distinct from the transparent, neutral-tasting commercial varieties.

The olive oil is then packed into large cannisters and air flown into Singapore, before being bottled by hand and sold to customers.

This approach stands in stark contrast to most commercial olive oil production. Alia found that much of it is heavily processed: olives are treated with pesticides, violently shaken from trees, hot-pressed for speed and yield (for comparison, cold-pressed oils yield around 35% of the olive pulp, while hot-pressed oils yield about 37%), and chemically stabilised to extend shelf life—a process that can compromise both flavour and quality.

Moreover, commercial olives typically don’t get pressed for nearly 16 hours, which means the olives would have already entered their fermentation phase, further affecting the oil’s characteristics.

Using food & storytelling to raise awareness

For Alia, Beît Ballout is closely tied to its origins, and she has chosen not to separate the product from its broader cultural and regional context.

She describes her approach as “soft activism”—using food and storytelling to raise awareness and encourage discussion.

This has included initiatives such as curated dining experiences and content on platforms like Substack, where she writes about Levantine history and current affairs.

In addition, as demand for the Ballout’s olive oil grew, the business started engaging workers from local and displaced communities during harvest periods, providing wages and logistical support.

Navigating rising costs and regional instability

Currently, each 500ml bottle of Beît Ballout’s EVOO starts at S$45. It’s priced higher than most commercially available options, but reflects its production methods and supply chain.

However, bringing the product into Singapore has become increasingly challenging.

Alia’s family home is in southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel—an area that has seen recurring conflict.

During a visit last Oct, she encountered these conditions firsthand, including drone activity and an explosion just a hill away from her family’s home.

More recently, intensified bombings in Mar forced residents in parts of southern Lebanon to evacuate, leaving behind stored harvests, including 30 tins of the Ballouts’ oil. But thankfully, most of the stock has already been flown into Singapore and is kept safe.

Despite rising costs and logistical challenges, Alia has chosen not to increase prices.

“I haven’t increased my price since the recent escalations, despite it being more difficult to bring in,” Alia reflected. “Every dollar we earn, I want to put back into the village,” she added.

Building Singapore’s first olive oil bottling facility

Apart from selling directly to individual customers, Beît Ballout also supplies restaurants such as The Mandala Club’s Popi’s Restaurant, Wooloomooloo Steakhouse, and Suzuki by Kengo Kuma.

To scale operations, Alia is building Singapore’s first olive oil bottling facility, spanning 700 square feet, to handle bottling and packaging. While an exact opening date has not been announced, the facility is set to launch soon.

With olive harvesting and processing temporarily paused due to the ongoing situation in Lebanon, Alia is pivoting to other products using existing stock. She recently introduced a line of olive oil soaps, handmade by her mother, who has run a spa business in Oman for over three decades.

Alia has also visited Spain to study traditional olive oil farms, noting similarities in production methods and business models with those in the Levant.

The brand remains deliberately small and mission-driven. “I’ve never been profit-driven. I feel like I’m put on this earth to retell stories. My marker of success is putting our little village on the map,” Alia said.

I want to change the perspective that people have of Lebanon, one that is not of war and chaos, but instead filled with good produce and community. Alia Ballout

• Find out more about Beît Ballout here.
• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

Also Read: ⁠⁠Singaporeans reflect on the Gaza conflict: Balancing empathy, neutrality and national cohesion

Featured Image Credit: Beît Ballout