Newmarket, at the northern edge of the Greater Toronto Area, has a growing Muslim community that's expanded north from Richmond Hill and Aurora along the Yonge Street corridor. Historic Main Street Newmarket retains a small-town core with a handful of long-standing restaurants, while newer halal-certified options have opened further out along Yonge Street and near Mulock Drive as residential development continues to push into the town's outer edges.

As one of the furthest-north cities in the GTA's halal food map, Newmarket sits at something of a frontier — its halal restaurant scene is smaller and newer than what's found in York Region cities closer to Toronto, but it's growing quickly as families priced out of Richmond Hill and Vaughan move north while staying within commuting distance of the city. That growth pattern means new halal restaurants opening in Newmarket today are often the first of their kind in a given plaza or neighbourhood.

Watermelon Points gives those early Newmarket restaurants a meaningful head start. Members who discover a halal spot on Main Street can redeem their points at a newer restaurant near Mulock Drive, or at any other participating business across York Region and the wider GTA network, building loyalty across the whole town rather than one corner of it. For Newmarket's halal-certified restaurants and grocers, becoming a founding partner means no monthly fee, a Square point-of-sale integration that takes minutes to connect, and early placement as Watermelon Points extends its reach to the northern GTA. Newmarket also anchors the northern end of the platform's York Region launch cities, alongside Richmond Hill and Aurora, so a Newmarket restaurant's earliest customers may already be earning points just down Yonge Street — and every new restaurant that joins strengthens that shared corridor for everyone already on the network, from Aurora in the north down through Richmond Hill toward Toronto.