Toronto is home to one of the largest and most diverse Muslim communities in North America, and it shows in the city's halal food scene. Gerrard Street East — sometimes called Little India, though its restaurants span Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and broader South Asian halal cuisine — has been a go-to strip for biryani, kebabs, and sweets for decades. A few kilometres north, Thorncliffe Park is one of the most densely Muslim neighbourhoods in the city, packed with halal grocers, bakeries, and family-run kitchens serving everything from Somali sambusas to Afghan mantu.

Further east, the Golden Mile along Eglinton Avenue East and the Kennedy Road corridor in Scarborough form another major halal dining hub, reflecting Scarborough's deep South Asian, Middle Eastern, Somali, and Sri Lankan Muslim populations. Flemingdon Park and the Victoria Park & Warden area add still more density, with strip-mall restaurants that punch far above their storefronts. Across the city, halal options range from fast-casual shawarma counters to sit-down Pakistani, Somali, Lebanese, Turkish, and Bangladeshi restaurants, plus a growing wave of halal-certified grocery stores, bakeries, and dessert shops.

Watermelon Points brings all of that together under one loyalty program. Instead of a different punch card or app for every restaurant on Gerrard Street or every bakery in Thorncliffe Park, Toronto customers carry a single Watermelon Points balance that works at every participating halal business across the city — earn at a Golden Mile kebab shop, redeem at a Gerrard Street sweets counter. For restaurant owners, it means joining a network built specifically around Toronto's halal food economy, with no monthly fee for founding partners and a POS integration (Square, with Clover support built in) that works with the systems many Toronto restaurants already run. As the platform grows, Toronto's role as the flagship city is what puts local restaurants in front of the whole North American Watermelon Points community first.