It started in Plano. Now it's in Houston, Dallas and Austin.

Whole Foods Market Inc. has joined other national grocery retailers in the move toward digital pricing. Instead of using traditional pricing labels on shelves, Whole Foods has switched to electronic tags to save time and money.

By pressing a button, Whole Foods can change a shelf price instantly, instead of physically removing labels.

"We like them because it gives us more efficiency on the sales floor," said Michael Maynard, the head of Southwest Regional Information Technology for Whole Foods. "We find the customer is also more trusting of the price."

The digital tags are only slightly bigger than a saltine. The pricing information is sent to the tag wirelessly through a main computer server. Whole Foods is touting these labels as environmentally friendly because it reduces the need to use paper and plastic tags that are often thrown out when a sale ends.

The Whole Foods store in Plano was the first to test the digital labels three years ago. That went so well that the Whole Foods Southwest region, which includes Texas and Louisiana, decided to expand it through its Texas locations.

Unlike paper labels, these can't be removed easily and help eliminate confusion about what items correspond to what prices.

"It saves us a lot of labor and materials," Maynard said. "We used to use a little vinyl shelf tag that we put on a plastic chip and put that on the shelf. You can imagine how much labor (switching) saved us."

Maynard said the downtown Austin store has used the new price labels for about three months. There are thousands there, and they cost about $5 apiece. The Gateway location on Research Boulevard will receive them in December.

He said customers might benefit from the new tags because Whole Foods can react to competitors' prices faster.

"If somebody has lower prices down the street, we can change the whole category down to the price as well," Maynard said.

Whole Foods isn't the only grocery store to experiment with digital price tags. H.E. Butt Grocery Co. is also using them in a San Antonio pilot store.

But the price-conscious chain isn't sure about using it in all of its stores. Spokeswoman Leslie Lockett said the technology is still expensive and implementing it in all locations would cause a price increase.

"At H-E-B., we don't change our prices very often, it's mostly our sale prices, so the labor savings aren't as great as one may think," Lockett said. "Right now we are not interested in buying the technology across the company."

lrockwell@statesman.com; 445-3819