SUNRISE, FL. Back in December 2025, state inspectors walked into a Sunrise Chevron convenience store and found subs, sliders, lunchables, and salami-cheese snacks all sitting in an open cooler at 50 degrees Fahrenheit, nine degrees above the legal maximum for cold-held food. Every one of those items was voluntarily discarded on the spot.
That was not the only problem waiting for inspectors that morning. The Chevron on the inspection record was operating without a valid food permit at the time of the visit, a foundational violation that regulators treat as a threshold issue, separate from everything else they documented that day.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector's notes on the cooler were specific. Subs measured at 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Lunchables at 49 degrees. Salami-cheese snacks at 50 degrees. Sliders and deli sandwiches also at 50 degrees. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services issued a Stop Sale and Release order for the affected items, citing adulteration under state food safety law.
Inspectors also found Capri Sun juice pouches sitting in a beverage reach-in cooler that were not labeled for individual sale, a violation of federal food labeling requirements. Those were pulled from the cooler during the inspection.
Beverages were stored directly on the floor in both the retail area and the backroom, a basic violation that creates contamination risk from standing water and pests. The restroom lacked a handwashing sign for employees, and the store had no written procedures for responding to a vomiting or diarrheal event on the premises.
None of the six violations were corrected on site in a way that cleared the record. The food discarded during the visit addressed the immediate safety risk, but the underlying cooler failure, the permit status, and the procedural gaps were not resolved during the inspection itself.
What These Violations Mean
The cold-holding failure is the most urgent finding for anyone who shopped at this location in December. When refrigerated ready-to-eat foods like deli sandwiches and lunchables sit above 41 degrees Fahrenheit, bacteria that cause foodborne illness, including salmonella and listeria, can multiply rapidly. At 50 degrees, food can reach dangerous bacterial levels far faster than most shoppers would expect. The items in that cooler were not slightly warm. They were nine degrees above the legal threshold, and the inspector had no way to know how long they had been at that temperature before the visit.
The permit violation adds a separate layer of concern. A food permit is not just paperwork. It is the mechanism by which a facility is tracked, inspected on a regular schedule, and held accountable to state food safety standards. Operating without one means the store was selling food to customers without that regulatory oversight in place. The fact that an application had been submitted at the time of the inspection suggests the store was aware of the lapse.
The absence of written vomiting and diarrhea response procedures may sound administrative, but it is a genuine public health issue for a retail food environment. Norovirus, one of the most common causes of foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States, spreads through exactly these kinds of events when staff are not trained to contain and disinfect properly. The inspector provided written guidance on Norovirus cleanup during the visit.
The Longer Record
The December inspection was not this store's first encounter with state regulators. Records show 20 inspections on file for this location, with 80 total violations documented across that history. That works out to an average of four violations per inspection visit.
No emergency closures appear in the facility's history, which distinguishes it from locations where conditions deteriorated to the point of an ordered shutdown. But 80 violations over 20 inspections, with a cold-holding failure significant enough to trigger a Stop Sale order, suggests the December findings were not an isolated bad day.
None of the six violations from the December inspection were marked as repeat violations, meaning inspectors did not flag them as problems that had been cited and unresolved in a prior visit. That is a technical designation, not a clean bill of health. A facility can accumulate violations across inspections without any single one being formally coded as a repeat.
The inspection was categorized as an "Operating Without a Valid Food Permit" visit, meaning inspectors came specifically because the store was selling food without the required permit in place. The store's application had been submitted by the time inspectors arrived, but the permit had not yet been issued.
As of the December 3 inspection, the open cooler that held subs, lunchables, and sliders at temperatures above 50 degrees had no violations corrected on site beyond the voluntary discard of the food itself. The cooler remained in use.
