23 April 2013

BEIRUT: Two years ago, Rabih Khalifeh saw a news report on TV about how Lebanese apple farmers were overproducing, causing perfectly good food to go to waste. That’s when he came up with the idea for a dried apple company.

“There’s a lot of apple production in Lebanon, but the market is smaller than the production,” says Khalifeh. “This is a response to a social and economic problem.”

In partnership with his wife of 10 years, Maya Moussallem, Khalifeh is launching Appy’s, a company that will sell bags of dried apples, similar in size and shape to potato chips.

With the Lebanese apple industry in recession and a growing trend toward healthier eating throughout the Middle East, the couple – both Beirut-based architects – sees this as the perfect time to develop their product.

Lebanese apple farmers produce around 130,000 metric tons of apples per year. However, they have been struggling for years due to increases in the cost of labor, fertilizers and pesticides. This is compiled by an oversupply of product relative to local demand, resulting in low prices.

Apple growers in regions like the Bekaa Valley have an even harder time trying to sell their smaller, less desired apples, which are better suited for juicing or preserving.

Khalifeh and Moussallem have already contacted local farmers and dieticians, many of whom have expressed support for their concept. They are using a dehydrating machine to test their prototypes, which they found produced a healthier end product than the fried, dried apples they’d sampled from abroad.

They say they will work hard to make the apple chips affordable, a major obstacle for health food companies trying to break into the mainstream market.

They haven’t yet set a price, but they say Appy’s will be cheaper than the LL10,000 bag of imported apple chips they once came across in Beirut.

Their business plan for Appy’s beat 4,000 others to let them become one of 50 semifinalists in an annual entrepreneurship competition. The six winners of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Enterprise Forum of the Pan-Arab region will be announced in Doha at the end of the week.

“Most new businesses in Lebanon are technology oriented. Ours is different,” says Moussallem, adding she expects them to be the only ones bringing food samples with them to the competition.

So far, they have four flavors: natural, salted, cinnamon and caramel.

If the dried apple sales are successful, they will then expand to dried tomatoes and perhaps a cocktail of dried fruits in a bag that they can eventually distribute throughout the country.

First, they plan to test the dried apple market in Lebanon at local supermarkets, gyms and schools, and if it’s successful, they’ll look into expanding abroad. If all goes as planned, Appy’s will be on the shelves this fall – just in time for apple season.

Copyright The Daily Star 2013.