PEMBROKE PINES, FL. Back in March 2026, a state inspector visiting a Pembroke Pines lemonade cart walked away with two violations, both tied to the same problem: the person running the stand that day did not know the answers.
The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services inspected Elemonade, a mobile vendor operating in Pembroke Pines, on March 25, 2026. The facility met sanitation inspection requirements overall, but the visit produced two priority-foundation violations, both centered on the person in charge.
What Inspectors Found
CITED
NOT CITED
The first violation was direct: "Person in charge at time of inspection could not answer questions that relate to foodborne illness." That is the inspector's own language in the report.
The second violation followed from the same gap. The inspector wrote that the person in charge "could not show written employee procedures for cleanup of a vomit and diarrhea event." Both violations fall into the priority-foundation category, meaning they represent a foundational requirement, not a technical or minor one.
Neither violation was corrected on site.
What These Violations Mean
The "person in charge" requirement exists for a specific reason. Florida food safety rules require that whoever is running a food operation at any given moment be able to demonstrate knowledge of foodborne illness, including which illnesses require an employee to be excluded from work and how contamination spreads. When that person cannot answer those questions, there is no functional safety check operating at the facility.
For a mobile vendor, that gap is especially direct. A cart or truck operates without a manager in a back office. The person at the counter is the person in charge. If that individual cannot identify a foodborne illness risk or explain what to do about it, customers have no practical layer of protection.
The vomit and diarrhea cleanup requirement sounds unglamorous, but it addresses one of the most acute contamination risks in food service. Norovirus, one of the most common causes of foodborne illness outbreaks, spreads through exactly these events. Written procedures ensure that contaminated material is contained and surfaces are treated with the correct disinfectants in the correct order. Without a written plan, cleanup is improvised, and improvised cleanup frequently misses the pathogen.
At Elemonade in March 2026, inspectors found no written plan existed, and the person running the stand could not describe one.
The Longer Record
The March 2026 inspection report does not list prior inspections on record for this facility, which is consistent with a relatively new or infrequently inspected mobile vendor. Without a longer inspection history to compare, it is not possible to say whether these violations reflect a pattern at Elemonade specifically.
What the record does show is that neither violation was flagged as a repeat citation. That means inspectors had not documented the same problems at this location in a prior visit, at least not in the records tied to this inspection.
The facility did meet overall sanitation inspection requirements on March 25. That designation means the inspector did not find conditions serious enough to warrant a stop sale order or an immediate closure. The two violations that were cited, however, were not resolved before the inspector left.
Unresolved on Departure
Both violations remained open at the close of the March 25 inspection. The person in charge could not answer foodborne illness questions before the inspector arrived, and the same was true when the inspector left. No written cleanup procedures were produced during the visit.
The inspection record does not document a follow-up visit or a corrective action response filed after the fact. As of the information available in this report, those two foundational gaps were unresolved when the cart closed that day.