A fast-casual burger chain built entirely around halal certification is setting up shop inside San Jose's Eastridge Center, becoming the only hamburger vendor in the mall's food court. iniBurger plans to open its sixth restaurant in late August, with a grand opening scheduled for early September at 2200 Eastridge Loop.
Founders Abdul Popal and Leeza Popal announced that iniBurger is joining the Eastridge Center food court, as reported by the East Bay Times. The couple, both tech industry veterans who moved to the United States from Afghanistan as children, launched iniBurger in Pleasanton in 2020. Every hamburger the chain serves is 100% halal-certified, and so are its chicken sandwiches, wings, and strips, per the same report.
Customers "shouldn’t have to give up quality, creativity or ambiance just because you keep hala,” Leeza Popal said, according to the East Bay Times. The brand leans into its multicultural roots even in its menu vocabulary: iniBurger uses the term b’igi for its full-size burgers and m’ini for smaller ones, drawing on the word ini, which means “this” in Farsi, Indonesian, and Malay.
What's Actually on the Menu
The San Jose location will serve both classic burgers and smash burgers made with USDA Choice Angus beef, with the Americano and the smash burger ranking as the chain's two best-selling items. Chicken options are cage-free, all-natural, hormone-free and antibiotic-free, the East Bay Times reports. Sides include meal-size salads, crinkle-cut fries, sweet potato fries, onion rings, macaroni and cheese bites, and milkshakes, plus a dozen in-house-made sauce options.
The chain's halal standards go well beyond the meat itself. According to Restaurant Business Online, iniBurger's certification extends to every menu component, including its custom-baked buns and Martin's Famous Potato Rolls, requiring auditing at the point of sourcing, slaughter, processing, and packaging. That end-to-end approach traces back to how the brand was built: Abdul Popal launched iniBurger in 2020 after his run as a franchisee of the collapsed Burgerim chain, turning his remaining locations into an independent, fully audited halal concept.
From One Burger Window to Six Locations
iniBurger has grown steadily since its Pleasanton debut, opening in Fremont in 2020, Santa Clara in 2023, Campbell in 2024, and Berkeley in 2025, according to the East Bay Times. The Pleasanton restaurant is corporate-owned, while the chain's other locations operate as franchises. Abdul Popal has also said the company plans to open a restaurant in Hayward, per the East Bay Times report.
Behind the scenes, iniBurger runs two virtual sister brands, iniWings and iniSliders, out of its existing kitchens to capture additional delivery and takeout orders without opening new storefronts, Restaurant Business Online notes. The strategy lets the company multiply its digital footprint across food delivery apps while keeping its physical expansion focused on brick-and-mortar flagship locations like the one coming to Eastridge.
The brand's community ties in the Bay Area go back to its early days. In August 2021, iniBurger donated a portion of its sales across its East Bay locations to financial relief and rehousing funds for Afghan refugees, a fundraising effort Hoodline reported at the time as the Popals integrated philanthropy into their early operations.
A Mall in Transition Gets Its Burger Anchor
Eastridge Center itself carries some historical weight. When it opened on May 17, 1971, in San Jose's Evergreen district, the mall was recognized as the largest enclosed regional shopping mall in the Western United States, according to background compiled on Wikipedia. Today the property spans more than 1.2 million square feet and was purchased for $135 million in January 2024 by an investment firm led by developer Chris Jiashu Xu, as reported by The Real Deal.
The mall's food scene is expanding on multiple fronts. In September 2022, an investor purchased the former 260,000-square-foot Sears site connected to Eastridge for $24.8 million with plans to build an indoor market featuring up to 50 food vendors, a project Hoodline covered in its piece on the planned Vietnamese market. Eastridge has also drawn attention for other reasons this year, including a recent after-hours rave held at the mall.
Halal Dining's Bigger Draw
iniBurger's expansion lands amid a broader surge in halal fast-casual dining. The North American halal food market is projected to roughly double this decade, growing from about $100.1 billion in 2024 to $226 billion by 2033, according to trend data compiled by Malou. That growth isn't limited to Muslim consumers: market research from TechSci Research indicates non-Muslim buyers account for 30% to 40% of urban U.S. halal food purchases, drawn by perceived benefits in ingredient transparency and ethical sourcing.
For now, the immediate draw for San Jose customers is more tangible than market trends. Those who sign up ahead of the opening at iniburger.com/san-jose can get pre-opening perks and a buy-one-get-one voucher for opening day, and a golden ticket promotion will award two winners free food for a year, per the East Bay Times. Whether the Eastridge debut leads to further franchise expansion across South Bay malls remains to be seen, with the Hayward location the next confirmed step in the chain's growth.
The Eastridge area itself sits across from Reid-Hillview Airport, which Santa Clara County plans to close around 2031, a shift Hoodline detailed in its coverage of a local youth baseball league that lost its fields amid the airport dispute. That closure is expected to lift local height restrictions and open surrounding parcels to redevelopment, adding another layer of change to the neighborhood where iniBurger is now placing its bet.
