Alia Ballout: Aspiring lawyer who quit rat race to build her olive oil brand
Alia Ballout, the 28-year old founder of Beît Ballout, in her studio at Delta House, with the olive oil mural created by local artist Kenneth Seow as a feature wall. (Photo: Samuel Isaac Chua/EdgeProp Singapore)
When Alia Ballout launched Beît Ballout, her olive oil business, in February 2023, it was essentially a one-woman operation. She carried bottles of olive oil in her bag and went door-to-door pitching to restaurants, cafes and retailers.
Initially, she ran the business only on the weekends.
“I was trying to build an olive oil company on the side,” she says.
Bottles of Beît Ballout olive oil, ready to be shipped out (All photos: Samuel Isaac Chua/EdgeProp Singapore)
That was because she was still pursuing a conventional career. During the week, she worked in the legal profession.
“I was trying to fit into the corporate world and join the rat race like everybody else,” says the 28-year-old. “Everyone around me appeared fine and thriving. So I forced myself to fit the role.”
Born in Singapore — to a Singaporean mother, Mae Lam and Lebanese father, Adib Ballout — Alia and her brother, Alawi, grew up in Oman, where they attended an international school.
Before moving to Singapore, Alia completed a double degree in political science and sociology in the UK. She later interned at the Lebanese Embassy in London. But after graduating, she found herself at a crossroads.
When her father asked what she wanted to do next, she had no answer.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know’,” she recalls. “And he said, ‘You’re Singaporean, and you’ve never lived in Singapore.’”
So, Alia moved to Singapore in 2020 to pursue a Juris Doctor programme at the Singapore Management University.
‘Lost’ in Singapore
Moving to Singapore during the pandemic proved challenging. Wanting to be continually engaged, Alia tried a little of everything.
She worked as a waitress, spent time in advertising, took on a stint at Singtel’s now-defunct streaming platform Hooq, and even made it to the Singapore national football team’s trials.
“I was so lost, I was trying everything to see what stuck,” she says.
Adjusting to life in Singapore was equally difficult. “I was stuck here by myself, and initially, I found it stifling and wanted to leave,” she says.
She later secured a coveted training contract with an international law firm — the sort of opportunity many aspiring lawyers would jump at.
“At work, I was excited and full of life,” she says. “I’d go into meetings with a lot of ideas, but they were never valued.”
Origins
The idea for Beît Ballout did not come out of nowhere. Entrepreneurship runs through the Ballout household.
Her mother left a career as a Singapore Airlines stewardess to establish what she describes as the first Singaporean day spa in Oman. Her father built an oil-and-gas business in Oman, which he sold sometime during Covid.
In 2018, while driving around southern Lebanon in search of a suitable place to build a summer house, they came across an abandoned hilltop property. Lam persuaded her husband to purchase it. As the land included an olive grove, the Ballouts — the new owners — also inherited it.
Lam became curious about making olive oil the traditional way. The couple travelled back and forth between Oman and Lebanon to undertake this new project. In the meantime, Ballout also owned a piece of land with some olive trees, but it did not produce enough oil to sell.
At the facility, Ballout fills and packs every bottle of olive oil by hand
Despite that, Alia believed there was room in Singapore for a premium olive oil brand built around handpicked, cold-pressed olive oil from her family’s grove. She named the business Beît Ballout, meaning “House of Oak” in Arabic, as a tribute to her family’s ancestral surname, Ballout, which translates to “oak”.
At that time, Alia felt disconnected from Singaporeans, and missed her family. “I just wanted to raise awareness about Lebanon,” she says. “I wanted to bridge a cultural gap — the same way my Lebanese father eats durian, and my mum picks olives.”
As she nurtured her business, she realised the corporate path was not for her. In March 2025, she left the legal profession and committed herself fully to Beît Ballout.
Chance encounter
Alia’s decision to become a full-time entrepreneur coincided with another major life change: her parents’ relocation from Oman to Singapore.
In fact, Alia had facilitated her parents’ purchase of a four-bedroom unit at Jervois Mansion when the project launched in October 2021 — she was the only family member in Singapore at the time.
The furniture in the Ballout home at Jervois Mansion were shipped from their former home in Oman
The freehold condo in prime District 10 was completed late last year, and the family moved into their new apartment in April. One day, while exploring the neighbourhood on a stroll with her father, they came across Delta House along Alexandra Road.
He remarked that it looked like an ideal location for her business, particularly as it was within walking distance of their home.
They viewed a unit that was available for lease, but the rent was beyond what Alia could afford.
As father and daughter were leaving, they struck up a conversation with another pair of prospective tenants who had reached the same conclusion.
The pair later asked whether she would be interested in subletting part of the unit they planned to rent. That chance encounter led Alia to her current 714 sq ft studio.
Before she could begin operations, however, she spent four months working with the Singapore Food Agency to obtain the approval to bottle and pack olive oil on the premises.
“It is Singapore’s first olive oil packing facility,” she says.
Raising favours, not funds
Fitting out the space required a different kind of ingenuity. Her father told her to “figure out the interiors” on her own.
Without the budget for a professional fit-out, Alia turned to partnerships, barter arrangements and plenty of persistence.
Prints of artwork by Singaporean and Southeast Asian artists curated by independent Singapore-based art collector and collective Gofy Art
To furnish the studio, she enlisted the support of local artists and businesses. Singaporean illustrator Kenneth Seow created the olive-tree mural on one wall, while art curator and collective Gofy Art supplied prints by local and Southeast Asian artists. Raffles Paint sponsored the paintwork, Lotto Carpets Gallery provided a Persian rug, and much of the furniture was sourced from Carousell and Taobao.
The makeshift shelving units made from plastic crates and plywood were also purchased from Carousell.
The entire fit-out cost about $12,000 and took seven months to complete. “It was non-stop,” says Alia. “I had literally six cups of coffee a day.”
'The crazy olive-oil girl'
When she was doing the business part-time, one of her earliest retail wins was getting Beît Ballout stocked at homegrown cafe chain, The Providore. However, it closed in March 2026.
Alia soon discovered that rejection came with the territory of building a startup. She recalls one chef referring to her as “the crazy olive-oil girl”, but she took it in her stride.
One early rejection has since seen a fortuitous turnaround: when she first approached specialty grocer Little Farms, the company declined to stock her products.
However, Little Farms has begun carrying Beît Ballout olive oil across its eight stores in Singapore since last month as the brand gained prominence.
To promote her business, Alia became a regular vendor at Singapore Boutiques and City Sprouts’ Eco Fairs, where she gradually built a loyal customer base.
Navigating uncertainty
The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has disrupted supply chains, and Alia says the bottles of olive oil on her shelves came from the last shipment that successfully passed through the Strait of Hormuz.
Nevertheless, she has since expanded her brand’s offerings.
Beît Ballout now distributes olive oil from Spanish producer Picualia, carries Palestinian spices such as sumac and za’atar, and sells handcrafted soaps made by her mother’s spa business in Oman, with botanicals from the family’s garden in Lebanon and Beît Ballout’s olive oil.
The handcrafted soaps made by Lam's spa business in Oman, also sold at Beît Ballout
“We have become a speciality goods store where we bring in only products that align with our values of transparency and authenticity,” she says. “We carry products we believe in.”
Today, Beît Ballout sits at the intersection of the two worlds that have shaped Alia — urban Singapore, where she built the company, and the Lebanese hillsides where her family’s olive trees still grow.
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