> Quick view: Village Grocer opens at Horizon Mall, Iskandar Puteri on Thursday 3 September 2026, 10am to 10pm, at unit 1F-09. Opening day runs four offers at once: Buy 1 Free 1 on four items, spend-based freebies at RM100, RM150 and RM300, two Bites member gifts from RM30, and a free Lotte Pepero pack for a Google review left in store. Four more redemption dates follow on 10, 12, 17 and 24 September. The one worth planning around is 12 September, when RM350 spent on fresh seafood alone gets a whole 3kg to 4kg Norwegian salmon free, capped at 30 a day. This campaign ended on 24 September 2026. See the 21 October update below for the deals that still reach this store.

Update, 21 October 2026: what you can still use at Village Grocer Horizon Mall

The opening campaign has been over since Thursday 24 September, when the last freebie (a Wonda Iced Cappuccino on a RM100 receipt) was given out. The chain's New Zealand Fair that followed it ended on 11 October. Village Grocer has posted nothing store-specific for Horizon Mall since. Its Instagram this week is busy with the next opening, One Square in Bandar Utama on 23 October, and none of those gifts apply in Johor. So the question for a shopper in Horizon Hills is no longer "which freebie day?" but "which chain-wide deals reach this store?". On 21 October, four of them do.

1. Bakery: 60% off the second item, 16 to 31 October 2026

Buy two items from the in-store bakery section and the cheaper one is 60% off. Village Grocer's own post lists the outlets where it does not run: Gamuda Walk, IOI Mall Puchong, LSH33 Sentul, Cheras Leisure Mall, MET Galleria Mall, Vangohh Eminent, City Junction, 1st Avenue, Queens Waterfront Q1 Penang and IOI Mall Kulai. Horizon Mall is not on that list, so it applies here. IOI Mall Kulai, the other Johor store most people would compare it with, is excluded.

How the maths works, using round numbers for illustration: a RM12 loaf and a RM9 pastry come to RM21 at shelf price. The discount comes off the lower-priced item, so you save RM5.40 (60% of RM9) and pay RM15.60. Pair two items of similar price. A RM12 loaf with a RM3 bun saves you only RM1.80.

2. Bites Member Price, 16 to 31 October 2026

These are shelf prices for Bites members. No voucher is needed, but the Bites card or app must be scanned at the till. Signing up is free in the Bites app. On the Bites online store on 21 October, the member list included:

  • Chobani Greek Yoghurt 160g (nine flavours): RM11.69, against RM13.15 (RM13.20 for honey)
  • Ecobrowns Gold Wholegrain Mix 2kg: RM15.19, against RM18.55
  • Dynamo 4-in-1 Laundry Capsules 52s (four variants): RM59.89, against RM89.10, the biggest cut on the list at about 33%
  • Mak Nyonya instant pastes and sauces 200g (asam pedas, rendang, tom yam, chicken and fish curry) at RM6.95, with no "was" price printed

Online and in-store prices can differ. Treat the online figures as a guide.

3. VG Brands Fair markdowns

A VG Brands Fair collection went live on the Bites store from 16 October, with more lines added on 19 and 20 October. Of its roughly 250 products, 109 carry a "was" price. Examples: Naturel 3kg cooking oils (blend, sunflower, canola) at RM30.39 against RM36.80; Naturel pure olive oil 750ml at RM42.59 against RM53.50; So Good almond milk 1L at RM10.99 against RM12.35; 100 Plus 1.5L at RM3.69 against RM4.45; Mr Potato tubes 125g at RM4.09 against RM5.60. Village Grocer has not published an end date for this fair. Check the shelf tag before stocking up.

4. Bumper Harvest weekends (Friday to Monday)

Every week, the chain runs one or more headline deals from Friday to Monday at all outlets. Last weekend (16 to 19 October) it was frozen black tiger shrimp paste 150g at RM9.99. The next edition should land on Friday 23 October, but its item had not been posted when we checked. Watch @myvillagegrocer on Friday morning. For delivery or pick-up through bites.com.my, the codes FD10 (RM10 off plus free delivery at RM250) and FD5 (RM5 off at RM150) were still being quoted on 16 October.

What does not reach this store: the RM5 e-voucher on an RM80 receipt that Village Grocer runs on the last Saturday of the month (31 October 2026 is the next one) has, in every post we could read, named a single outlet elsewhere. Horizon Mall has not been one of them.

At Horizon Mall itself

  • Deepavali, 16 October to 15 November 2026. The mall is running its Festival of Lights programme, with workshops free on a same-day receipt from any tenant. Check @horizonmall.jb for the next date.
  • Halloween parade, Saturday 31 October, 4pm. Free to join with registration (the form is linked in the mall's post), with a mystery gift for the best costume.
  • DMC GT7 Time Attack, 2 to 31 October at DMC Karting (2F-01, 02, 19): RM200 for each of three circuits you beat within the target time, up to RM600.
  • Free yoga, every Tuesday 8.30am to 9.30am on 2F, run by Anytime Fitness. Bring your own mat. No registration needed.
  • J Bee Family blind box. The mall's September post said spend RM200 and redeem one at the 1F Concierge Counter until 31 December. It has not been re-posted since, so ask at the counter before you shop for it.

The rest of this page is the record of how the September opening worked, kept because the pattern (a one-day Buy 1 Free 1, then one gift day a week, with a single big-ticket fresh-seafood day) is how Village Grocer still runs its openings. One Square in Bandar Utama is following the same playbook this week.

Why a supermarket opening is the local story here

Horizon Mall is not another box on the Tebrau strip. It is Gamuda Land's 150,000 sq ft neighbourhood mall built inside the Horizon Hills township in Iskandar Puteri, with a biophilic layout that mixes air-conditioned zones and semi-open walkways rather than one sealed shell. Gamuda Land's own announcement named Village Grocer and Starbucks as the anchor tenants, with Starbucks taking a drive-through, and put the catchment at the 20,000 residents inside Horizon Hills plus roughly 250,000 in the neighbouring townships. The mall sits next to Horizon Hills Golf and Country Club, which alone counts 6,400 members, and across the road from Invictus International School.

The mall opens with it, and that is now confirmed rather than inferred. Horizon Mall's own Instagram account has been running a daily countdown, "10 days to go" on 23 August and "4 days to go" on 29 August, and both land on 3 September, the same date Village Grocer prints on its poster. The mall has since published an opening campaign of its own, dated from that same day. So this is not a grocer opening inside a mall that is already trading: the anchor and the mall switch on together. The developer's own tenant directory already lists Village Grocer at unit 1F-09, alongside The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, ZUS Coffee, Chagee, Baskin Robbins, The Chicken Rice Shop, Watsons, Caring Pharmacy, Matsukiyo, Mr.DIY, Mr.TOY, Xiaomi, Anytime Fitness, Thai Odyssey, and family draws including Jungle Gym, DMC Karting, Little Angel Theme Park and Funmax. The mall's published hours are 10am to 10pm daily, which is exactly the window Village Grocer has printed on its own opening poster.

Opening day, 3 September: four things running at the same time

The Bumper Bonanza, a one-day Buy 1 Free 1

Village Grocer's own artwork calls this a 1 Day Special, and it is dated 3 September 2026 only. Four items carry a Buy 1 Free 1 flag:

  • Tuscan Fields Brown Button Mushroom 200g, RM8.90 a packet. Two packets for RM8.90 works out to RM22.25 a kilo against RM44.50 at the single-packet price.
  • Frozen Toman Slice 500g, RM18.90 a packet. The packaging in the poster is labelled frozen snakehead slice, which is the same fish. A full kilo for RM18.90.
  • Blueberry 125g, RM9.90 a punnet. Driscoll's branded in the artwork. Two punnets, 250g, for RM9.90.
  • Pineapple Chicken Burger 125g, RM6.50. An Aqina Farm patty. The poster prints the unit as per kilo against a 125g pack, which does not add up, so read the shelf label before you decide how many to take.

There is a fifth item on the same poster that is not a Buy 1 Free 1, and it is the one most likely to be misread. Fresh Norwegian Atlantic Salmon Whole, 3kg to 4kg, is listed at RM55.99 a kilo. That is a price, not a giveaway. It matters later, because it is the number that lets you value the free fish on 12 September.

The spend tiers, from RM100

Three general freebies run on opening day, each on a single receipt:

  • RM100 gets a 100 Plus Ori Zero Grape 1.5L, 216 a day.
  • RM150 gets a Village Grocer exclusive goodie bag, 200 a day.
  • RM300 gets a Fruits and Vegetable gift bag, only 50 a day.

Look at the caps rather than the thresholds. The RM300 tier is the one that will be gone first, because 50 units against an opening-day crowd at a mall serving a quarter of a million people is a very small number.

Two more if you are a Bites member

On a separate poster, Village Grocer reserves two gifts for Bites members, on 3 September only:

  • RM30 nett in a single receipt gets a Village Grocer non-woven bag, one redemption per member.
  • RM150 nett in a single receipt gets a pack of Savoir Kampung Eggs 15s, limited to the first 300 members.

Membership is free and the poster carries a sign-up QR code. The mechanics printed underneath are the part people get wrong: the Bites card must be scanned before the purchase, and you are told to refresh the Bites app after paying to check for the voucher. In other words the member gift lands as a digital voucher, not as an item handed over at the till.

Review and win

The last opening-day offer did not make it into most of the listings. Village Grocer is running an Opening Freebies Redemption "Review and Win" on 3 September, 1 day only: leave a Google review with both a photo and written text, using the QR code displayed in store, and collect a free Lotte Pepero White Cookie big pack, 8 x 32g. The pack shown in the artwork is an artist-collaboration edition, and the poster's own footnote says the picture is for illustration purposes only, so do not go expecting a specific box.

After opening day, the campaign becomes a Thursday habit

Line the four remaining dates up and a pattern appears that none of the listings mention. 10, 17 and 24 September are all Thursdays, the same weekday as the opening itself. Each of those three needs the same RM100 single receipt and hands over one item: Pasta Di Martino Fusilli 500g on 10 September (200 a day), Paldo Rice Punch 1.5L on 17 September (200 a day), and Wonda Iced Cappuccino PET 500ml on 24 September (216 a day).

12 September is the Saturday exception, and it is the only date in the campaign that is worth rearranging a weekend for.

The 12 September salmon, in ringgit

The offer reads: spend a minimum of RM350 of purchase value on fresh seafood products only, and take home one whole Fresh Norwegian Atlantic Salmon of 3kg to 4kg, free. Thirty a day.

Value it against Village Grocer's own opening-day price of RM55.99 a kilo and a 3.5kg fish comes to roughly RM196. Against a RM350 threshold that is about 56 sen back for every ringgit committed, before you count whatever the RM350 of seafood was worth to you in the first place. Nothing else in the campaign is in that league: the RM100 tiers hand back a 1.5L soft drink or a 500g pack of pasta.

Two things temper it. The threshold counts fresh seafood only, so a mixed grocery run does not get there on total spend, and 30 redemptions is the tightest cap in the whole campaign.

Horizon Mall is running a second campaign, and it is not Village Grocer's

This is the part every listing of the grocery deal has missed. On 29 August the mall published its own Opening Month Special on the Horizon Mall Instagram account, and it is a separate campaign with separate dates:

  • 3 September: a free Horizon Mall shopping bag for the first 500 shoppers.
  • 4 to 30 September: spend and get a free shopping bag, listed as a gift with purchase.
  • 3 to 30 September: a lucky draw, with a Nintendo Switch 2 as the headline prize. The artwork stacks other appliances around the console without naming any of them.
  • 12 September to 31 December: spend and redeem an exclusive "J Bee Family" blind box, built around the mall's own bee mascot.
  • 3 to 30 September: a "Count the Bee" challenge for a mystery gift.

The poster itself carries no ringgit figures, but the caption on the mall's pinned Instagram post fills them in: RM50 for the 4 to 30 September shopping bag, RM200 for a lucky-draw entry with the winner announced on 3 October, and RM200 for the blind box, all redeemed at the Concierge Counter on 1F. Neither source publishes a daily cap or names Village Grocer, so ask at the counter before assuming a Village Grocer receipt is what gets counted. Mall enquiries go to 07-232 3433.

Two of those dates are worth carrying in your head. The mall's campaign runs to 30 September, six days longer than Village Grocer's own, so the grocery freebies stop before the mall's do. And the blind box runs to 31 December, which means the mall's giveaway outlives the entire grocery campaign by more than three months. If you cannot make any date in September, that is the one still standing in the new year. The blind box also starts on 12 September, the same Saturday as the free salmon, which makes that the densest day of the whole opening.

A worked basket for opening day

Say you take all four Buy 1 Free 1 lines at one unit each and pay for one of each: RM8.90 plus RM18.90 plus RM9.90 plus RM6.50 is RM44.20, and you walk out with double of everything. Add a 3.5kg whole salmon at RM55.99 a kilo, about RM195.97, and the receipt reaches roughly RM240. That clears the RM150 goodie-bag tier and the RM100 drink tier with room to spare, and leaves you about RM60 short of the RM300 fruit-and-vegetable bag. Whether all three can be claimed at once is the open question, and it is worth asking customer service before you join the queue rather than after the receipt prints. That same receipt is the one you would carry to the mall's own counter for its opening-month gifts, if the mall counts tenant receipts at all. At about RM240 it clears the mall's RM200 threshold for a lucky-draw entry and the blind box, but the mall has not put the tenant-receipt rule in writing, so ask at the Concierge Counter before you rely on it.

The fine print that will trip people up

  • Store-specific. The Bites poster states the offers are valid for purchase at Village Grocer Horizon Mall, JB during the promotion period only. None of it works at the group's other stores, including its existing Johor Bahru outlet at The Mall, Mid Valley Southkey.
  • Caps are per day, and first come first served. Village Grocer prints that rule on the member poster. The scarce ones are 50 fruit-and-vegetable bags, 300 member egg packs and 30 salmon.
  • Scan the Bites card first. After the receipt closes there is no fix.
  • The salmon threshold is seafood only, not a total basket.
  • The Google review needs a photo and written text, not a star rating, and it is 3 September only.
  • One date conflict in the artwork. On the Bites poster, the Chinese line under the non-woven bag reads 23 September 2026 while the English and Malay lines both read 3 September 2026. The rest of the campaign, and the opening itself, point to 3 September.
  • Read the Bumper Bonanza poster carefully. Only four of the five items carry a Buy 1 Free 1 flag. The salmon is a straight price.
  • The mall's thresholds are in the caption, not the poster. Horizon Mall's artwork names five mechanics and no ringgit figure; its pinned Instagram caption adds RM50 for the bag and RM200 each for the draw and the blind box.
  • The 9.30am lion dance is on Village Grocer's own website. The opening posters do not mention it, but the Horizon Mall opening page on villagegrocer.com.my says to catch a lion dance performance at 9.30am, half an hour before the 10am to 10pm trading window printed on the posters.

Who this is for, and who should stay home

Worth going: anyone already living in Horizon Hills, Bukit Indah, Eco Botanic, Nusa Idaman, Nusa Bestari, Gelang Patah or Perling, for whom this replaces a longer drive; Horizon Hills golf club members and Invictus parents who are on site anyway; and Singapore side day-trippers, since Horizon Hills sits close to the Malaysia to Singapore Second Link and the mall lists the Second Link first among its access roads.

Give it a miss: if you are coming from JB city centre, Tebrau or Permas Jaya, the drive runs the wrong way and Village Grocer's Mid Valley Southkey store is far closer, even though the opening freebies do not apply there. And if the only reason for the trip is the RM100 gift, be honest about it: you are committing RM100 to bring home a bottle of soft drink or a packet of pasta.

Getting there

Horizon Mall is at No. 1, Jalan Eka 3, Horizon Hills, 79100 Iskandar Puteri, Johor Darul Ta'zim. The mall's own page lists access via the Malaysia to Singapore Second Link, the North-South Expressway, the Skudai Expressway and the Perling Expressway. Mall hours are 10am to 10pm daily, and Village Grocer's poster prints the same window for the store. The mall's own channels are instagram.com/horizonmall.jb and facebook.com/horizonmall.jb, the tenant directory with unit numbers sits on the developer's site at horizonhills.com.my/horizon-mall, and the published enquiry line is 07-232 3433.

Related reads

*Image: Village Grocer. Opening Month Special details read off Horizon Mall's own campaign poster and pinned Instagram post; status re-checked 21 October 2026 against Village Grocer's and Horizon Mall's Instagram and the Bites online store.*