Most people don’t think much about the little stickers that sometimes come on the fruits and vegetables they buy at the grocery store. The pesky round stickers always have a couple of numbers on them and despite what many people think, they aren’t there to simply annoy us.
The numbers are an items Price Look-Up (PLU) code, which are used and placed on unprocessed, fresh produce. Grocery stores and supermarkets use these codes to keep track of inventory and to speed up, streamline, and improve check-out times. The stickers and numbers readily identify the type of produce, commodity, variety, and how it was grown, thus eliminating the human error involved in cashiers guessing what specific type of produce an item may be. Read the full story here ▶
