Miami grocery store was open for business before it ever had a food permit

MIAMI, FL. Back in December 2025, state inspectors walked into a Miami grocery store and found it already open for business, serving customers, without ever having obtained a valid food permit.

The store was Hanna & Tiger's Asian Mart Tropical Park Store, a small Asian grocery on the western edge of Miami-Dade County. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services inspection, conducted on December 22, 2025, documented three violations. None were corrected on site.

What Inspectors Found

The lead finding was straightforward: the store was operating before it had ever passed an initial inspection or been issued a food permit. In the inspector's own words, "This food establishment was found to be operating prior to the initial inspection without a valid food permit." An application had been submitted, the records note, but the permit had not been granted.

That distinction matters. A food permit is not a formality. It is the state's confirmation that a facility has met minimum standards before it opens its doors to the public.

The inspector also flagged two priority foundation violations, both tied to the store's unpermitted status. One cited the absence of written procedures for employees to follow in specific food safety situations. The other was more concrete: in the backroom, next to the mop sink, an unlabeled spray bottle containing a purple cleaning solution was sitting on a shelf. The inspector's notes describe it as "an unlabeled spray bottle with purple cleaner found on the shelf next to the mop sink area."

An unlabeled chemical container in a food storage or prep area is not a paperwork problem. It is a contamination risk with no paper trail.

What These Violations Mean

Operating without a valid food permit means the state had not yet verified that this grocery store met the baseline requirements for safe food handling before it began selling to the public. There is no confirmed inspection on record showing the facility was ready. If a food safety problem had emerged, there would be no permit history to consult and no established record of what conditions looked like at opening.

The missing written employee procedures compound that concern. These written protocols are required precisely because they create a consistent, documented response when something goes wrong, a spill of a potentially hazardous substance, a sick employee, a temperature failure. Without them, staff have no formal guidance, and inspectors have no way to verify that the store had thought through those scenarios before opening.

The unlabeled spray bottle is the most immediate hazard in the December report. When a cleaning chemical is removed from its original container and placed in an unmarked bottle, anyone who picks it up cannot know what it contains, how concentrated it is, or whether it is safe to use near food. In a grocery environment, where surfaces, shelving, and equipment come into regular contact with products that customers take home and eat, an unidentified chemical in an unmarked container is a direct contamination risk.

None of the three violations were corrected during the December 22 inspection visit.

The Longer Record

The inspection history for this location is short. The December 22, 2025 visit was the initial inspection, the first time state inspectors evaluated the facility. That is the only context the record provides for that date.

What came after tells a different story. A follow-up focused inspection conducted on March 2, 2026 found zero violations. That single data point suggests the store addressed the issues raised in December, at least to the level required to pass a focused review.

But the gap between those two dates is worth noting. The December inspection found a store already open without a permit, with no written safety procedures in place and an unidentified chemical in the back room, and none of those problems were fixed before the inspector left. The March inspection found no violations. What happened in between is not in the public record.

What the record does show is that this store began serving customers before the state had signed off on its readiness to do so. That is the finding the December inspection documented, and it remained unresolved on the day the inspector walked out.

For Shoppers

Hanna & Tiger's Asian Mart is a small grocery, under 15,000 square feet, in Miami. Customers who shopped there in the weeks before December 22, 2025 were doing so at a store that had not yet been cleared by state inspectors. The permit application had been filed, but the permit had not been issued.

The March 2026 focused inspection found the store in compliance. Whether the written employee procedures were put in place, whether the unlabeled chemical bottle was properly labeled or removed, those specifics are not in the follow-up record.

What is in the record: on December 22, 2025, an unlabeled bottle of purple cleaning solution was sitting on a shelf in the backroom of a grocery store that had opened without state authorization, and it was still there when the inspector left.