Coles shopper stunned by trolley checkout trick

It’s an annoying problem that’s familiar for anyone who has ever used a self-serve checkout – but it turns out there’s an easy fix for it.

It’s the supermarket hack so simple, you’ll wonder why you hadn’t realised it earlier.

But plenty of Australians are still only just working out that there’s a much easier way to pay for your groceries at a Woolworths and Coles self-serve checkout.

Both supermarkets last year confirmed they were rolling out a self-serve checkout change which allows for trolleys to slot on top of the basket tray, making it much easier to unload and scan groceries.

However, many shoppers are only just finding this out, with one sharing a photo to Reddit of their trolley slotting into a Coles self-serve checkout.

“Am I the only person that didn’t know you could slide these trolleys over the self-checkout?” they captioned the photo.

The shopper questioned how they had only just worked out that their small trolley fit in the trol

Their post got over a 100 comments, with several people joking it was “too much for me to take in this late in the game” and they were “going back to bed”.

“If only more people figured this out, a lot better than blocking people leaving and entering the self serve check outs,” one commented.

“They now have specific self check-outs for people with trolleys, at least in the Coles I frequent occasionally, but most people with trolleys seem to be oblivious,” another said.

“Only learnt it a couple of months ago, when one of the Woolworths checkout monitors told me about it one day,” one person commented.

Last April, Coles confirmed it was making the change to allow trolleys space at supermarkets nationally, with the updated check-outs sporting “park your trolley here” stickers.

First implemented in 2020, the self-serve trick continues to go viral as it is rolled out at more supermarkets nationally. Picture: TikTok/

“Coles is making it easier for customers to use trolleys in our self-checkout area by lowering the basket shelf so our smaller trolleys can fit right over the top,” a spokeswoman for the supermarket said at the time.

“This saves space and means customers can quickly scan products from their trolley and place them directly into their bags.”

Last November, Woolworths employee Liam Kirley, a former store worker who now runs the supermarket’s TikTok page, shared a video confirming the self-serve change.

“If you want to skip bagging and you have a smaller trolley, these trolleys sit into our registers just like that – so you can easily place items into the trolley,” he said in the clip.

TikTok user @EbonyHit was the first to go viral with the revelation that smaller trolleys could now fit in self-serve check-outs.

Her video, posted in April 2020, saw her labelled “Australian of the year”, with supermarket employees even admitting they “didn’t even know this”.