BARTOW, FL. Back in May 2025, a state inspector visiting Granny Mac Beverage Company, a coffee and tea processor on the outskirts of Bartow, found that the person running the facility that day could not produce a single written document about what to do if an employee showed up sick.
The inspection, conducted May 21, 2025, under the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, resulted in three violations. The facility met sanitation inspection requirements overall, but what the inspector documented in those three citations points to gaps in basic food safety infrastructure that go beyond a cracked floor tile or a dusty shelf.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector noted that the person in charge "had some knowledge of employee health information, but did not have any employee health information available to help them answer questions about employee health as it relates to food borne illnesses and their symptoms, and reporting responsibilities, exclusions and restrictions of food employees."
That is not a paperwork technicality. It means the individual responsible for the facility that day could not demonstrate, to a state inspector's satisfaction, that the operation had a functioning system for keeping sick workers away from food production.
The third violation was equally direct. According to the inspector's notes, "the food establishment does not have a written vomit or diarrhea event clean up procedure available." The inspector gave management a guidance handout to help write one.
None of the three violations were corrected on site during the inspection.
What These Violations Mean
Granny Mac Beverage Company processes coffee and tea, products that consumers take home and use repeatedly, often without additional cooking steps that might kill pathogens. That context makes the employee health violations more significant than they might appear in a sit-down restaurant setting.
The "person in charge" citation is classified as a priority foundation violation, a category that signals the problem is structural rather than incidental. When a facility cannot demonstrate that its management knows which illnesses require workers to be excluded from food handling, and cannot produce documentation to back that up, there is no reliable mechanism to prevent a sick employee from handling product.
The absence of a written cleanup procedure for vomiting or diarrhea events is in the same category. Norovirus, one of the most common causes of foodborne illness outbreaks, spreads readily through contaminated surfaces and can survive on equipment if not properly disinfected. A facility that processes food for retail distribution and has no written protocol for handling such an event is relying entirely on improvisation in a moment when improvisation is most likely to fail.
The missing food protection manager certificate is a separate issue but compounds the picture. A certified manager is trained to recognize and respond to exactly these kinds of risks. The inspector found no certificate available for review.
The Longer Record
The May 2025 inspection was not the first time a state inspector had visited Granny Mac Beverage Company. State records show 23 inspections on file for this location, with 97 total violations documented across that history. No emergency closures have been recorded.
The facility's recent inspection history is thin in the FDACS records provided. An August 2022 visit found one violation, and a second inspection on the same date found none. The May 2025 inspection added three more, one of which was flagged as a repeat.
The repeat violation designation matters. It means an inspector had documented the same problem at a prior visit and found it unresolved when they returned. With 97 total violations across 23 inspections, the facility is averaging more than four violations per inspection over its full recorded history, a rate that suggests recurring compliance gaps rather than isolated incidents.
Where Things Stood After the Inspection
The facility met the overall sanitation inspection threshold in May 2025, which means it was not ordered closed and was not subject to a stop sale order. No products were pulled from shelves as a result of this inspection.
But none of the three violations cited that day were corrected while the inspector was present. The inspector left behind guidance handouts for both the employee health policy and the vomit and diarrhea cleanup procedure, meaning the facility was being asked to build, from scratch, two foundational food safety documents it did not have.
As of the inspection date, Granny Mac Beverage Company had no certified food protection manager certificate on file for review.
