---
title: "Meet Beirut Spice Co.: A Sustainable Bay Area Venture"
url: https://stacklist.com/card/a3466115-a9ea-485c-a4d8-b2b8212eb2a1
source_url: "https://www.berkeleyside.org/2025/02/24/beirut-spice-co-lebanon"
stack: https://stacklist.com/c/food/stack/f1884010-72e8-45a2-a924-0f23456427a1
summary: "Beirut Spice Co is a Lebanon-based spice company founded by Naseem Raad, a professor of underwater archeology, to address Lebanon's economic crisis through high-quality spice exports to the U.S. market. The company sources premium spices from local farmers through a sustainable cooperative model and handles all logistics, packaging, and international distribution from Lebanon."
tags: "lebanon, spices, export, entrepreneurship, sustainable-business, beirut, bay-area"
key_entities: "Naseem Raad (person), Zaher Radwan (person), Beirut Spice Co (organization), American University of Beirut (organization), Green Hand (organization), Lebanon (location), Berkeley (location), Bay Area (location), Aley (location), economic-sustainability (concept), maritime-economic-history (concept), Lebanon economic crisis 2019-2020 (event)"
classification: "article"
content_hash: "sha256:328f43611f7e39364f0c83bf880eeb6301a731584d9c63b69f6caddbd679236c"
acp_version: "0.2"
token_counts_approximate: 2088
visibility: public
agent_accessible: true
status: "final"
---

# Meet Beirut Spice Co.: A Sustainable Bay Area Venture

Naseem Raad has two seemingly unrelated titles: a professor of underwater archeology at the American University of Beirut and founder and co-owner of Beirut Spice Co ., a Lebanon-based company that has made the Bay Area its U.S. home base. “I don’t usually like to push my background or make my background known, because I like them to be independent things. They don’t actually relate in any way,” Raad said. But, when Raad starts telling the story of his company, it becomes apparent that its origins are very much intertwined with his career in academia.  Raad’s research centers around economic history. He was teaching courses on maritime economic history when Lebanon’s economy collapsed in 2019 and 2020, bringing an economic crisis and hyperinflation. Lebanon is very import-dependent, according to Raad.   “We’ve never really been able to get on our feet in terms of exporting products on a wider scale,” he said. “… In the midst of an economic crisis and all the stuff that was going on in Lebanon, I started to adjust the courses to also incorporate a modern element.”  He was starting to not only teach history but also explain how it contributed to the world today. He started applying the economic principles of competition and trade that he had been lecturing about with the Phoenicians from 3000 years ago to the modern day. “The world wasn’t created in 10 years,” Raad said. “Our current climate around the entire world is the result of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of development.” After a while, Raad felt that just teaching this wasn’t enough. He wanted to put his words into action by finding something Lebanon could export. To contribute to economic growth, he decided it had to be something with a high value outside of the country and that was also ready to be exported. He landed on spices. Beirut Spice Co. launched with six spices: start with six spices: Za’atar, spicy za’atar, Aleppo pepper, sumac, Mediterranean herb sea salt, and fleur de sel. Credit: Beirut Spice Co. “We saw that we had a selection of spices that have a big market in the U.S., that we produce at premium quality. It’s some of the top quality in the world,” Raad said.  Next, Raad had to find a way to export the spices. He spent most of 2022 setting up a “deep infrastructure that is solid and consistent.” He did all of the research to make sure they would be fully compliant every single step along the way. He needed to deal with all of the logistics: the FDA, registrations, customs, etc.  “There’s no central organization,” Raad said. “The Ministry of Agriculture doesn’t say, ‘these are the standards that you need to do this.’ So we kind of had to take that role.”   Raad’s uncle introduced him to Beirut Spice’s current producer, Zaher Radwan, the president of the nonprofit organization Green Hand , which is based in Aley, Lebanon. He was already running a co-op that gathers from several local farmers and has continued to grow as Beirut Spice has grown. Raad told the co-op’s owner that he would come with an order every three months, and would handle all of the exporting and selling internationally himself. In November 2023, they did their first test shipment.  Beyond sourcing the spices in Lebanon, the graphic design, label printing, and packaging are all done there as well. Raad said that the word sustainable is used all the time, which makes it even more personal for him that this actually is sustainable.  “It’s economically sustainable and environmentally and socially sustainable because it’s an NGO and they help communities for green agriculture and sustainable agriculture,” Raad said. With the current conflict in Lebanon, shipping costs have risen dramatically as the volume of ships and planes transporting things out of Lebanon has decreased. Raad has spent a lot of time working around these difficulties and balancing the lead time, or the time from putting in an order to getting it to the United States, of two to three-and-a-half months. “So balancing all of that, trying to predict what’s going to happen politically in the country, and then managing all of our customers and interests here, it’s been a bit of a challenge,” Raad said. Once Raad’s wife, Tina Raad, entered the picture in April 2024, she became a co-owner of the company and pushed for establishing a local base in the Bay Area since Raad and Tina split their time between Lebanon and the Bay. Raad is originally from Los Gatos and Tina was born in Lebanon and grew up in Daly City. Beirut Spice Co. sells spices through its own website and on Amazon as well, in addition to sales at Bay Area stores and farmers markets. Credit: Beirut Spice Co. Tina has a background in the food industry. She was a server, the food and beverage manager at the Four Seasons in Palo Alto, and also helped with a small jam business that her dad had a decade ago.  Tina helped her dad with his jam business, called Grandma’s Homemade, running stalls at farmers markets and fairs. The jam business ended when Tina’s father died. So now, years later and with a different product, Tina’s picked up the same markets and community.  “We’re actually using the same hardware as 10 years ago, the same tent, table, and tablecloth,” Tina said. “So it’s very nostalgic.”  Raad decided that the company would be mostly online because that way they could reach a broad customer base from restaurants in France like his uncle dreamed of, or individuals in the United States. They started by selling through Amazon but Raad and Tina said that Amazon’s fulfillment process was “terrible,” so they’ve transitioned to starting their own online shop and using USPS. You can still buy on Amazon, but you can also buy through the website .  Tina and Raad aren’t sure if they will expand their in-person and in-store sales beyond the Bay due to their limited resources. “We kind of lose control of the process at that point, and it just goes to a distributor,” Raad said. “And then we don’t want to risk our spices spending six months on a shelf. Right now, our key aspect is that we get them there, and, within a month, all of it is sold.”  They have small batches and continuous turnover, and Raad worries that if they break from this model, the quality will suffer. The spices are all sourced from Lebanon, and they are of single origin. They ended up choosing to start with six spices: Za’atar, spicy za’atar, Aleppo pepper, sumac, Mediterranean herb sea salt, and fleur de sel. They chose these based on the demand they saw in the United States, but they are hoping to expand a bit this year. Raad believes their strategy for processing and maintaining freshness makes their spices match up with the best in the world.   “We don’t use any preservatives. We don’t use any additives. We vacuum seal the jars, which is unusual, in order to maintain the freshness,” Raad said. “So we’re trying to find direct ways with consumers to show this, because when consumers open the jar, an explosion of smell comes out.” They participate in fair trade and profit-sharing programs with the farmers. This means they bring in the product, sell it, and then transparently share a percentage of profits with the farmers.  Beirut Spice Co. mostly sells online, and the only places to buy in person are at farmers markets and stores in the Bay Area. Credit: Beirut Spice Co. Beirut Spice was at lots of holiday markets and is now in three retail stores in the Bay: the Olive Market in Pleasanton, the Cheese Boutique in Glen Park, and Senses Home Goods in North Beach. Raad said they’ve seen the most interest in the East Bay, and are looking forward to expanding their base there even further through markets and retail. “It’s really a personal project, and we’re really passionate about it,” Raad said. “It’s something that we built literally piece by piece until we reached the market. So it means a lot to us that we’re now holding fairs in our hometown in the Bay Area. It’s a bit surreal.” Beirut Spice will be at the Spring Market at Faction Brewing (2501 Monarch St., Alameda) Saturday, March 29, 1-6 p.m. Related stories Big things are blooming at this hidden farm in Oakland January 24, 2025