ZEPHYRHILLS, FL. Back in January 2026, a state inspector walked into a Zephyrhills seafood market and found sushi salads sitting in a self-service retail cooler at temperatures high enough to support bacterial growth, more than two hours after they had been prepared and packaged that morning.
The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services cited Advanced Fresh Concepts Pb 1196, a seafood market retail operation, for two priority violations during a January 5 inspection. The facility met sanitation inspection requirements overall, but the findings documented that morning raised direct food safety concerns for anyone who picked up a ready-to-eat item from the store's cooler.
What Inspectors Found
VIOLATIONS CITED
CORRECTIVE ACTIONS TAKEN
The temperature violation was the more immediately alarming of the two findings. According to the inspector's notes, Spring and Dou combo salad and rainbow rolls had been prepared and packaged at 7:00 a.m. that morning. When the inspector measured their internal temperature at 9:25 a.m., the products registered between 46 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit inside the customer self-service retail cooler.
That is a two-and-a-half-hour window during which ready-to-eat sushi sat above the 41-degree threshold that Florida requires for time and temperature control safety foods.
The inspector's notes state that an employee moved all the sushi rolls from the retail cooler to a freezer for rapid cooling, and the inspector verified the corrective action before leaving.
The second priority violation involved hand hygiene. The inspector observed food workers leaving the prep area and returning to work, putting on new gloves without first washing their hands. As the inspector noted: "Food workers left food prep area and returned to work putting on new gloves without washing hands."
The workers stopped when the issue was identified, removed their gloves, washed their hands appropriately, and the inspector discussed proper hand-washing protocol with both employees and the person in charge.
Neither violation was marked as a repeat. No stop sale orders were issued.
What These Violations Mean
Temperature control is one of the most fundamental protections in retail food safety, and it matters especially for ready-to-eat products like sushi. Foods held above 41 degrees Fahrenheit enter what regulators call the temperature danger zone, a range in which bacteria including Salmonella and Listeria can multiply. Sushi, which typically contains raw or minimally processed seafood, is among the higher-risk items a retail cooler can carry.
The products in question had been sitting above that threshold for at least two and a half hours by the time the inspector measured them. A shopper who picked up one of those rolls at 9:00 a.m. would have had no way of knowing the cooler was not holding temperature properly.
The hand-washing violation compounds that concern. Gloves are not a substitute for hand-washing. When a food worker returns from a non-food task and puts on fresh gloves without washing first, any contamination on their hands transfers directly to the glove surface and, from there, to whatever food they handle. In a market where workers are packaging ready-to-eat items, that is a direct transmission route with no cooking step to serve as a backstop.
Both violations were corrected during the inspection. But corrected on site means the problem existed until an inspector walked in and observed it.
The Longer Record
The January 5 inspection was the seventh on record at this location going back to July 2022. Across those eight inspections, the facility has accumulated a relatively modest violation history, with most visits resulting in zero citations.
The cleanest stretch ran from mid-2022 through early 2024. Inspections in July 2022, December 2022, May 2025, December 2025, and January 2026 all came back with zero violations. The February 2024 inspection also found no issues.
The exceptions are clustered at the beginning and end of the record. An inspection in June 2023 found two violations. The January 5, 2026 inspection found two priority violations. A subsequent inspection on February 11, 2026, roughly five weeks after the January visit, found two more violations, also under a Met Sanitation Inspection Requirements outcome. A focused inspection on January 26, 2026, sandwiched between those two, found nothing.
That pattern is worth noting. Three of the four inspections that resulted in citations have occurred in the most recent inspection cycle, and the February 2026 visit shows the facility picking up violations again after the January findings. The data does not specify what the February violations involved, but the clustering of cited inspections in late 2025 and into 2026 represents a shift from the cleaner record the facility maintained in prior years.
Where Things Stood
The facility passed the January 5 inspection overall, meeting sanitation inspection requirements despite the two priority violations. Both violations were addressed during the inspection itself, with the sushi moved to a freezer and the hand-washing issue corrected and discussed with staff.
What the record does not show is whether the retail cooler's temperature problem was a one-time equipment fluctuation or something the facility had been managing quietly. A cooler running between 46 and 50 degrees does not reach that temperature in minutes. The sushi had been in that cooler since 7:00 a.m. Anyone who shopped there before 9:25 a.m. encountered those products before the inspector did.