FL. Hot dogs and taquitos sitting on a self-service roller grill at 7-Eleven Store #46813A were measured at an internal temperature of 98 degrees F during a Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services inspection on September 23, 2026, records show. State law requires hot-held food to stay at or above 135 degrees F. The items were 37 degrees short of that threshold.
The inspection was triggered because the store was operating without a valid food permit. Inspectors arrived to conduct a sanitation review and found four violations, including one priority violation and one repeat citation.
What Inspectors Found on the Roller Grill
The inspector's notes on the roller grill are direct: "Hot dogs and taquitos displayed on roller grill at consumer self service had internal product temperature 98 degrees F." The store corrected the violation on site, with the inspector recording that food items were rapidly reheated to an internal temperature of 165 degrees F.
The handwashing sink near the three-compartment sink in the ware wash area had no soap and no paper towels or other hand-drying device available. The inspector noted the absence in plain terms: "Soap and paper towels or other hand drying device unavailable at hand sink near 3-compartment sink." That violation was also corrected on site, with soap and paper towels provided during the inspection.
The store had no certified food protection manager certificate available during the inspection. No one on the premises could produce documentation that a manager had passed a recognized food safety certification program.
A Repeat Problem in the Mop Room
The mop violation was not new. Inspectors marked it as a repeat citation, meaning the same problem had been documented in a prior inspection. The inspector's notes describe a mop sitting in a mop bucket next to the three-compartment sink rather than hung to dry, a setup that allows bacteria and mold to accumulate in a wet mop that then contacts floors throughout the store.
A repeat citation carries a specific weight in state records. It means the store was told about the problem, had the opportunity to fix it, and inspectors found it unresolved on a subsequent visit.
What These Violations Mean
The roller grill finding is the most consequential for anyone who buys food at this store. A hot dog or taquito held at 98 degrees F rather than 135 degrees F sits in what food safety regulators call the temperature danger zone, the range between 41 degrees F and 135 degrees F where bacteria multiply rapidly. The longer food stays in that range, the greater the risk of bacterial growth to levels that can cause illness.
What makes the roller grill scenario particularly direct as a risk is that the food is self-service. Customers reach for items themselves, without a counter transaction or any interaction that might reveal a problem. A shopper grabbing a taquito at 10 a.m. has no way to know the internal temperature.
The missing soap and paper towels at the handwashing sink compound that concern. A store employee who handles food after touching contaminated surfaces, and who cannot wash their hands properly because the sink lacks soap, becomes a direct transmission route. The ware wash area is where dishes and equipment are cleaned. Soap availability at that sink is a baseline requirement, not a discretionary one.
The absence of a certified food protection manager is a structural gap. Certification programs exist to ensure that at least one person in a food establishment has formal training in temperature control, cross-contamination, and employee hygiene. When no certified manager is present or documented, there is no verified anchor for those practices.
The Longer Record
The inspection data provided does not include a prior inspection count for this location, so a full pattern analysis across visits is not possible from the available records. What the record does show is that this inspection was initiated because the store was operating without a valid food permit, a designation that places it in a category of heightened regulatory scrutiny from the moment an inspector walks in.
The repeat mop violation is the clearest evidence of a prior inspection on record. A violation cannot be marked repeat without a preceding documented finding at the same facility. That means inspectors flagged the mop storage practice before September 23, 2026, the store was on notice, and the condition was unchanged when inspectors returned.
None of the four violations cited on September 23 were corrected on site in the sense that all four were resolved before the inspector left. Two were addressed during the visit, the roller grill temperatures and the handwashing supplies. Two were not corrected on site, the missing food manager certification and the repeat mop violation. Those remain as documented findings in the state record.
The store was operating without a valid food permit at the time of the inspection. That status, not a routine compliance check, is what brought inspectors through the door.
