HIALEAH, FL. Back in December 2025, state agriculture inspectors walked into a Hialeah grocery store and found raw meat sitting in a self-service open-air cooler, available for customers to pick up and buy, with no proper labeling on the packages.
That was not the only problem at Dani's Market and Distributors. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services inspection, conducted December 22, 2025, also found the store had been operating without a valid food permit, a violation the inspector flagged as a repeat from prior visits. Seven violations total were documented. None were corrected before the inspector arrived.
What Inspectors Found
The unlabeled meat drew the inspector's attention immediately. According to the inspection record, multiple packages of raw meat were displayed for individual sale in a self-service open-air cooler in the retail area without proper labeling. The inspector required all of them to be labeled before leaving.
The handwash sink in the food processing area was blocked by a prep table, making it inaccessible to employees. The table was moved during the inspection. A hand wash sign was also missing at that same sink location, next to the three-compartment sink in the meat processing area.
A package of soft American cheese, opened two days before the inspection and stored in a reach-in cooler next to the steam table, had no date mark on it. The person in charge could not correctly answer questions about foodborne illness symptoms or employee reporting responsibilities. The store also had no written procedures for handling vomit or diarrheal events.
A stop sale order was issued during the visit. The order cited Florida statutes 500.04 and 500.10, classifying the affected food as adulterated, specifically related to a time and temperature control failure in hot holding. The product was released after the stop sale was addressed, but the inspection record does not identify which specific item triggered the order.
What These Violations Mean
Operating without a valid food permit is not a paperwork formality. A permit signals that a facility has met baseline safety requirements and is subject to routine regulatory oversight. A store that lets its permit lapse, and continues selling food anyway, is operating outside that oversight structure entirely. At Dani's Market, the permit violation was flagged as a repeat, meaning inspectors had already documented this same problem before.
The unlabeled raw meat packages are a direct concern for shoppers. Labeling requirements on raw meat exist so consumers know what they are buying, where it came from, how it was processed, and how to handle it safely. Packages in a self-service open-air cooler without that information give a customer no basis to make an informed decision, and no traceability if someone becomes ill.
The stop sale order, issued under Florida's food adulteration statutes, means inspectors determined that food in the store did not meet legal safety standards and had to be pulled from sale. The specific finding was a hot-holding temperature violation, which means a food item that should have been kept hot enough to prevent bacterial growth was not being held at the required temperature.
The person in charge's inability to answer basic questions about foodborne illness and employee reporting is one of the more quietly serious findings in this inspection. When the person responsible for a food establishment cannot correctly explain what symptoms require an employee to stay home, or how to report a potential illness, the safety of everyone who shops there depends on knowledge that is not actually present.
The Longer Record
Dani's Market: FDACS Inspection History
Three inspections are on record for this location, and each one has included a repeat violation. The September 2024 inspection was the most serious, producing 22 violations and requiring a follow-up re-inspection. That re-inspection, in October 2024, brought the count down to five violations, and the store met sanitation requirements.
The December 2025 inspection shows the store met sanitation requirements again, with seven violations documented. But the permit violation, which appeared as a repeat, had already been a problem when inspectors visited in 2024. An application for a new permit had been submitted by the time of the December inspection, and the store was given ten days to remit the appropriate fee.
Five of the seven violations documented in December were corrected on site during the inspection. The permit violation and the lack of written vomit and diarrhea cleanup procedures were not among those corrected in the moment. The store was told to submit payment for its permit within ten days, and management received guidance for the written cleanup policy by email.