This 28 Y/O brings olive oil from the war zone of Lebanon to the shelves of S’pore
Alia Ballout brings centuries-old family traditions to Singapore with Beît Ballout
When Alia Ballout registered the company in Jan 2023, she had no idea what it would sell.
But a year later, he launched what he described as Singapore’s first indigenous oil product—sourcing the product from his family’s estate in southern Lebanon, airlifting it to Singapore, and bottling it locally by hand.
Today, the 28-year-old runs Beît Ballout alone. His family, which is split between Oman, Singapore, and London, comes in mainly during the harvest season in Lebanon.
We spoke to Alia to learn more about building a traditional olive oil business, and the challenges of operating across regions with ongoing volatility.
Turning values into business
Born in Singapore, Alia is the daughter of Mae Lam, a Singaporean Chinese, and Adib Ballout, a Lebanese.
He spent most of his childhood in Oman before moving to the UK, and later moved to Singapore at the age of 19, where he has since settled.
In 2021, he enrolled in the Juris Doctor program at Singapore Management University (SMU). While completing his degree, he found himself deeply disillusioned with nature and began to think of alternatives.
A business law course on company formation eventually prompted him to register the business in early 2023, despite not having a clear direction for the product at the time.
After graduation, he worked in the field of law and hospitality, including a stint at the Mondrian Hotel. Through interviews with chefs and industry professionals, he gained exposure to supply chains and export processes.
The idea for Beît Ballout finally came up later that year during a routine video call with his mother. He appeared on the screen in Lebanon, anointed by the sun, carrying a basket, picking olives from their tree. Alia stared at the picture—an Asian woman harvesting olives in Lebanon—and felt something stir in her heart.
“I watched her having so much fun,” Alia recalled. “I was like, that’s a weird picture. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.”
The Ballouts always had a piece of land with hundreds of olive trees in their yard. They would come back every few months to spend time at their home. The Ballouts used to pick olives to make olive oil as an annual family tradition, and if there were any left over, they would be given to friends and neighbors.
Seeing an opportunity to bring the family tradition to Singapore, Alia asked her father to send a can of olive oil from Lebanon on credit, as she had no money at the time. He then created a website for the company, naming it Beît Ballout, which means “House of Ballot” in Lebanese.
Building a product from scratch
Alia started small—buying small S$5 glass bottles from Scoop, which were all she could afford at the time, and filling them with her family’s Lebanese olive oil. He photographed the bottles and posted them on his personal Instagram account, which had about 200 followers.
He didn’t expect the post, so the positive response surprised him. “People were interested because it was something unusual to do, and because it came from me.”
Since then, Alia started selling Lebanese olive oil through her website.
Because her first packaging was modest, Alia had to be creative in marketing the product. “Bad bottle design forced me to sell the heck out of my product,” he said. I was a big believer in quality. I needed to show its value.”
In the early years, she balanced running the business with a full-time job at law firms, spending weekdays at the firm and weekends at pop-ups like Sprout, Crane Living, and eventually Boutique Fair.
“When I started pop-ups, I didn’t realize that all they were selling was space. I had to create and set up everything by myself”
At these events, he often stood for 12 hours a day, contacting customers, tasting, and talking to skeptics. He also managed the marketing and design of Beît Ballout. This consistent, collaborative approach is gradually building brand recognition in Singapore.
As demand grew, he eventually left his job at Mar last year to run Beît Ballout full time. Although he had just passed the Singapore Bar exam, he chose to pursue this business instead.
“This year, it will be my third time returning to Boutique Fair. The customers who didn’t know this time, grew with me and the brand.”
A way that started hundreds of years ago
An important part of the product’s appeal lies in the Ballout family’s ancestral method of harvesting and pressing olives by hand, a practice that dates back hundreds of years.
The Ballouts hand-pick olives—especially Baladi olives, a variety native to the region and common in Palestine—from about 500 trees on their property in Houmine El Tahta.
Harvesting takes place after the first rain, around October every year. The olives are then brought to a Mesaraor a pressing plant, where a granite wheel—used in the Levant for centuries—crushes them. Fresh olives are cold-pressed at 27°C within four to six hours of picking.
The result is a rich, green, opaque oil—buttery but fruity—different from the plain, neutral-tasting commercial variety.
The olive oil is then packaged in large cans and air flown to Singapore, before being hand-bottled and sold to customers.
This method is very different from most olive oil products. Alia discovered that most of them are highly processed: the olives are treated with pesticides, they are forcibly shaken from the trees, they are pressed with heat to speed up the yield (in comparison, cold-pressed oil produces about 35% of olive pulp, while hot-pressed oil produces about 37%), and the chemical quality can extend both life and well-being.
In addition, commercial olives are usually not pressed for about 16 hours, which means that the olives would have already entered their fermentation stage, which also affects the properties of the oil.
Using food and storytelling to raise awareness
For Alia, Beît Ballout is very close to its origins, and has chosen not to separate the product from its cultural and regional context.
She describes her approach as “soft activism”—using food and storytelling to raise awareness and encourage conversation.
These include initiatives such as curated dining experiences and content on platforms such as Substack, where he writes about Levantine history and current affairs.
Additionally, as the demand for Ballout’s olive oil increased, the business began to negotiate with workers from the local communities and the homeless during the harvest, providing wages and equipment support.
Navigating rising costs and regional instability
Currently, each 500ml bottle of Beît Ballout’s EVOO starts at S$45. It has a higher price than most options available for sale, but it reflects its manufacturing methods and supply chain.
However, bringing the product to Singapore is becoming more and more challenging.
Alia’s home is in southern Lebanon, near the Israeli border—an area that is constantly evolving.
During a visit last October, he experienced these conditions firsthand, including drone operations and an explosion on a hill far from his family’s home.
Recently, the bombing of Mar forced the residents in the southern parts of Lebanon to leave, leaving behind the stored harvest, including 30 cans of Ballouts oil. But thankfully, most of the stock has already been flown into Singapore and is being kept safe.
Despite rising costs and operational challenges, Alia chose not to raise prices.
“I have not raised my price since the last increase, despite the fact that it is very difficult to deliver,” said Alia. “Every dollar we earn, I want to put back into our new processing facility as I build something that Singapore has never seen before,” he added.
Building the first olive oil refinery in Singapore
Besides selling directly to the customer, Beît Ballout also supplies to restaurants such as Mandala Club’s Popi’s Restaurant, Wooloomooloo Steakhouse, and Kengo Kuma’s Suzuki.
To measure performance, Alia built the first olive oil bottling facility in Singapore, measuring 700 square meters, to handle bottling and packaging. Although the exact opening date has not been announced, the center will be unveiled soon.
With olive harvesting and processing temporarily suspended due to the ongoing situation in Lebanon, Alia insists on other products using existing stock. She recently launched a line of olive oil soaps, handmade by her mother, who has run a spa business in Oman for over three decades.
Alia 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 intentionally small and goal-driven. “I have never sought profit. I feel like I was put on this earth to retell stories. My marker of success is putting our village on the map,” said Alia.
I want to change the perception that people have about Lebanon, which is not one of war and chaos, but rather full of good products and society.
Alia Ballout
- Read more about Beît Ballout here.
- Read other articles we’ve written about Singapore businesses here.
Also read: Singaporeans reflect on the Gaza conflict: Balancing empathy, neutrality and national unity
Featured Image Credit: Beît Ballout
