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Fruit StickersThe average retail food market can stock a dozen or more different varieties of apples at one time. Add all those apple varieties to the many other fruits and vegetables in the produce department – there are more than 900 produce items registered today – and you can begin to understand the challenge facing check-out clerks and consumers alike to correctly identify all those fruits and vegetables.Fruit stickers have proliferated in recent years, at the retail community's request, to ensure that consumers are charged correctly for their produce purchases. The stickers bear four-digit "price look-up" (PLU) codes that help check-out clerks identify the items being purchased. In an era when time may be the most precious commodity, these stickers also help to speed consumers through busy check-out lines. Retailers also use the codes to track which produce items are most popular with consumers. Required by their retail customers to sticker their products, many produce packers have also taken the opportunity to place the variety name, and their company name or logo on the stickers in addition to the PLU code, to promote consumer education and brand loyalty. Admittedly, the stickers aren't popular with some consumers, who report they can be hard to remove. New technologies, such as the use of static electricity rather than a food-grade adhesive, are helping to make the stickers as consumer-friendly as possible. Moreover, many consumers have come to rely on stickers to correctly identify the variety of fruit being purchased and to identify particular favorite brands. (March 24, 1999)
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