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 alone. Her family, split between Oman, Singapore, and London, pitches in especially during Lebanon’s October harvest.

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 Mar last year to run Beît Ballout full-time. Although she had also recently passed the Singapore Bar examination, 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 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 our new processing facility as I’m building something Singapore has never seen before,” she added.

Building Singapore’s first olive oil bottling facility

Apart from selling directly to individual customers, Beît Ballout also supplied to 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

President Donald Trump and top defense officials are reportedly weighing whether to send ground troops to Iran in order to retrieve the country’s highly enriched uranium. However, the administration has shared little information about which troops would be deployed, how they would retrieve the nuclear material, or where the material would go next.

“People are going to have to go and get it,” secretary of state Marco Rubio said at a congressional briefing earlier this month, referring to the possible operation.

There are some indications that an operation is close on the horizon. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon has imminent plans to deploy 3,000 brigade combat troops to the Middle East. (At the time of writing, the order has not been made.) The troops would come from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, which specializes in “joint forcible entry operations.” On Wednesday, Iran’s government rejected Trump’s 15-point plan to end the war, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the president “is prepared to unleash hell” in Iran if a peace deal is not reached—a plan some lawmakers have reportedly expressed concern about.

Drawing from publicly available intelligence and their own experience, two experts outlined the likely contours of a ground operation targeting nuclear sites. They tell WIRED that any version of a ground operation would be incredibly complicated and pose a huge risk to the lives of American troops.

“I personally think a ground operation using special forces supported by a larger force is extremely, extremely risky and ultimately infeasible,” Spencer Faragasso, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Science and International Security, tells WIRED.

Nuclear Ambitions

Any version of the operation would likely take several weeks and involve simultaneous actions at multiple target locations that aren’t in close proximity to each other, the experts say. Jonathan Hackett, a former operations specialist for the Marines and the Defense Intelligence Agency, tells WIRED that as many as 10 locations could be targeted: the Isfahan, Arak, and Darkhovin research reactors; the Natanz, Fordow, and Parchin enrichment facilities; the Saghand, Chine, and Yazd mines; and the Bushehr power plant.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Isfahan likely has the majority of the country’s 60 percent highly enriched uranium, which may be able to support a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, though weapon-grade material generally consists of 90 percent enriched uranium. Hackett says that the other two enrichment facilities may also have 60 percent highly enriched uranium, and that the power plant and all three research reactors may have 20 percent enriched uranium. Faragasso emphasizes that any such supplies deserve careful attention.

Hackett says that eight of the 10 sites—with the exception of Isfahan, which is likely intact underground, and “Pickaxe Mountain,” a relatively new enrichment facility near Natanz—were mostly or partially buried after last June’s air raids. Just before the war, Faragasso says, Iran backfilled the tunnel entrances to the Isfahan facility with dirt.

The riskiest version of a ground operation would involve American troops physically retrieving nuclear material. Hackett says that this material would be stored in the form of uranium hexafluoride gas inside “large cement vats.” Faragasso adds that it’s unclear how many of these vats may have been broken or damaged. At damaged sites, troops would have to bring excavators and heavy equipment capable of moving immense amounts of dirt to retrieve them.

A comparatively less risky version of the operation would still necessitate ground troops, according to Hackett. However, it would primarily use air strikes to entomb nuclear material inside of their facilities. Ensuring that nuclear material is inaccessible in the short to medium term, Faragasso says, would entail destroying the entrances to underground facilities and ideally collapsing the facilities’ underground roofs.

Softening the Area

Hackett tells WIRED that based on his experience and all publicly available information, Trump’s negotiations with Iran are “probably a ruse” that buys time to move troops into place.

Hackett says that an operation would most likely begin with aerial bombardments in the areas surrounding the target sites. These bombers, he says, would likely be from the 82nd Airborne Division or the 11th or 31st Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU). The 11th MEU, a “rapid-response” force, and the 31st MEU, the only Marine unit continuously deployed abroad in strategic areas, have reportedly both been deployed to the Middle East.

Anthropic won a preliminary injunction barring the US Department of Defense from labeling it a supply-chain risk, potentially clearing the way for customers to resume working with the company. The ruling on Thursday by Rita Lin, a federal district judge in San Francisco, is a symbolic setback for the Pentagon and a significant boost for the generative AI company as it tries to preserve its business and reputation.

“Defendants’ designation of Anthropic as a ‘supply chain risk’ is likely both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious,” Lin wrote in justifying the temporary relief. “The Department of War provides no legitimate basis to infer from Anthropic’s forthright insistence on usage restrictions that it might become a saboteur.”

Anthropic and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests to comment on the ruling.

The Department of Defense, which under Trump calls itself the Department of War, has relied on Anthropic’s Claude AI tools for writing sensitive documents and analyzing classified data over the past couple of years. But this month, it began pulling the plug on Claude after determining that Anthropic could not be trusted. Pentagon officials cited numerous instances in which Anthropic allegedly placed or sought to put usage restrictions on its technology that the Trump administration found unnecessary.

The administration ultimately issued several directives, including designating the company a supply-chain risk, which have had the effect of slowly halting Claude usage across the federal government and hurting Anthropic’s sales and public reputation. The company filed two lawsuits challenging the sanctions as unconstitutional. In a hearing on Tuesday, Lin said the government had appeared to illegally “cripple” and “punish” Anthropic.

Lin’s ruling on Thursday “restores the status quo” to February 27, before the directives were issued. “It does not bar any defendant from taking any lawful action that would have been available to it” on that date, she wrote. “For example, this order does not require the Department of War to use Anthropic’s products or services and does not prevent the Department of War from transitioning to other artificial intelligence providers, so long as those actions are consistent with applicable regulations, statutes, and constitutional provisions.”

The ruling suggests the Pentagon and other federal agencies are still free to cancel deals with Anthropic and ask contractors that integrate Claude into their own tools to stop doing so, but without citing the supply-chain-risk designation as the basis.

The immediate impact is unclear because Lin’s order won’t take effect for a week. And a federal appeals court in Washington, DC, has yet to rule on the second lawsuit Anthropic filed, which focuses on a different law under which the company was also barred from providing software to the military.

But Anthropic could use Lin’s ruling to demonstrate to some customers concerned about working with an industry pariah that the law may be on its side in the long run. Lin has not set a schedule to make a final ruling.

‘These verdicts mark an unsurprising breaking point,’ said Forrester VP research director Mike Proulx.

A landmark legal case has found that Meta and YouTube are designed to be addictive to children. A day earlier, Meta lost a child safety lawsuit, which found that its platforms’ design features enable child sexual exploitation.

The mounting legal challenges are being heralded by some as Big Tech’s ‘Big Tobacco moment’, intending to address some of the harm caused by social media platforms to its youngest users.

A jury in Los Angeles deliberated the case across nine days and concluded that Meta and YouTube are liable to pay the 20-year-old plaintiff behind the lawsuit a total of $6m in damages. Meta has been assigned 70pc of the financial responsibility, and YouTube 30pc.

Half of each company’s penalties will be used to compensate the plaintiff’s losses, including for mental health support, while the other half is for punitive damages to punish the companies.

Kaley GM’s lawsuit, filed in 2022, also included TikTok and Snapchat; however, both of them have since settled outside of court.

The young plaintiff said she began using YouTube from the age of six, and Instagram from nine. One day, she spent 16 hours on Instagram, she said. The plaintiff blamed the platforms for inflicting harm, including depression and body dysmorphia.

Her lawsuit is one of thousands currently pending, which together could deliver serious financial damages to the companies involved and help change the legal landscape social media platforms function under.

Meta and Google said they disagreed with the verdict. Google said it plans to appeal, while Meta said it is evaluating its legal options.

“This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site,” Google added.

Attempts have been made in recent years to bolster child safety on social media, including a controversial underage social media ban which took effect in Australia, and is currently being debated in several European countries. Platforms are also beginning to self-police.

‘Traditional’ social media aside, the advent of generative AI tools has added to the difficulty of protecting users online, as seen with Grok, where users can prompt the chatbot to undress people in pictures and videos.

“These verdicts mark an unsurprising breaking point. Negative sentiment toward social media has been building for years, and now it’s finally boiled over,” said Forrester’s VP research director Mike Proulx.

“This problem sits at the intersection of social media companies’ platform responsibility, years of government regulatory inaction, and the role parents and educators play in helping kids build healthier digital habits.

“These verdicts aren’t just about social media’s past. They’re a dire warning about how we handle the next wave of technology.”

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In a bipartisan team-up, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley are demanding more transparency regarding the energy use of data centers. 

The pair sent a letter to the Energy Information Administration on Thursday, urging the EIA to “establish a mandatory annual reporting requirement for data centers.” Wired reported the news earlier. 

Data centers have become a major topic of debate, as tech giants like Amazon Web Services, Google, Meta and Microsoft continue to buy massive amounts of land to house artificial intelligence data centers. While some landowners are taking the payouts, others — like a Kentucky woman and her mother, who turned down $26 million to sell their land — are holding out because of their opposition to data centers.

The interested buyer in Kentucky remains anonymous, but the landowner told WLKY they were described as a “major artificial intelligence company.”

Not only do data centers need large plots of land for their infrastructure, but they also require substantial water and electricity to operate. The exact amounts are not always known, which is why the senators are urging the change. 

The collected information would help with grid planning and “will support policymaking to prevent large companies from increasing electricity costs for American families,” Warren and Hawley’s letter stated in part. 

BloombergNEF reports that by 2035, the energy demand for data centers will more than double.

On Wednesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced a bill to pause all data center construction until the government enacts safeguards. 

“AI and robotics are creating the most sweeping technological revolution in the history of humanity,” Sanders said in a statement. “The scale, scope and speed of that change is unprecedented. Congress is way behind where it should be in understanding the nature of this revolution and its impacts.”