ORLANDO, FL. Back in March 2026, state agriculture inspectors walked into International Food Club LLC on Orlando and found a gyro cone that had been cooked the previous day sitting in a reach-in cooler at 46 to 47 degrees Fahrenheit at 10:30 in the morning, hours after it should have safely cooled. The kitchen manager voluntarily discarded it on the spot.
That was one of 14 violations inspectors documented during the March 24 visit, including three priority violations and three stop sale orders. The inspection type itself tells part of the story: this was an "Operating Without a Valid Food Permit" inspection, meaning the grocery store was open and serving customers without a current permit from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
What Inspectors Found
The cold-holding failures spread across multiple areas of the store. In the kitchen, a reach-in cooler held liquid egg whites at 48 to 49 degrees Fahrenheit and plain yogurt at 43 to 47 degrees. Both were voluntarily discarded.
Out in the retail area, a cheese cooler registered various cheeses at 45 degrees while a technician worked on repairs with the doors open. Inspectors watched as staff relocated the cheese to a freezer and confirmed it dropped back to 41 degrees or below. Separately, Cheese Pie, Turkish, and Spinach Pie Breads with labels stating "KEEP REFRIGERATED" were found stored at ambient temperature, measuring 67 to 71 degrees Fahrenheit. Those were also voluntarily discarded.
The sewage problem was found at the warewashing area. Inspectors noted that the three-compartment sink had a "back-up/draining issue at the point of the air gap." That was repaired before inspectors left.
The cooling violation connected directly to the gyro. The inspector noted that the large gyro cone had been placed in a plastic container with a tight-fitting lid to cool overnight in the reach-in cooler, a method that traps heat and prevents safe temperature drop. Proper cooling requires food to fall from 135 degrees to 70 degrees within two hours. The gyro, still at 46 to 47 degrees the following morning, had not come close.
No Permit, No Certified Manager, Unlabeled Food
The store was open for business on March 24 without a valid food permit. Inspectors noted that a permit application had been submitted, but the establishment was operating in the meantime.
There was also no certified food protection manager on the premises, and inspectors could not verify that employees had been informed of their responsibility to report symptoms of foodborne illness. A Food Employee Reporting Agreement handout was provided during the inspection. The store also had no written procedures for cleaning up vomit or diarrhea, a standard emergency protocol requirement.
On the retail floor, multiple violations involved labeling. Various snack items packaged on-site were missing weight, address, and ingredient information. Moroccan Msemen bread and multi pita bread bags were not labeled from the source. Multiple olives at a self-service olive bar carried no labeling at all. Items were pulled from the retail area during the inspection.
Three stop sale orders were issued and subsequently released. All three cited Florida Statutes 500.04 and 500.10, classifying the affected food as adulterated. The grounds covered food not in good condition, improper cooling time and temperatures, and improper cold holding temperatures.
What These Violations Mean
The cooling violation involving the gyro is among the most direct food safety risks in this inspection. Bacteria including Clostridium perfringens and Bacillus cereus multiply rapidly in cooked meat held between 41 and 135 degrees Fahrenheit. A gyro cone sitting at 47 degrees through an overnight period and into the next morning represents hours of bacterial growth in a product that had already been cooked and was intended for sale. The tight-fitting lid the cook used to cool it made the problem worse, trapping heat that needed to escape.
The cold-holding failures across the retail cheese cooler and the ambient-temperature storage of refrigerated breads at 67 to 71 degrees carry the same underlying risk. Dairy and prepared bread products labeled "KEEP REFRIGERATED" carry that instruction because they support bacterial growth at room temperature. Customers purchasing those items would have had no way of knowing they had been sitting outside refrigeration.
Operating without a valid food permit is not a paperwork technicality. The permit process is how regulators verify that a facility meets baseline safety standards before it opens to the public. A store without one has not completed that verification. The absence of a certified food protection manager compounds this: inspectors noted that the lack of a certified manager, combined with the presence of priority violations, indicated inadequate demonstration of food safety knowledge at the management level.
The Longer Record
The data does not include a prior inspection count for International Food Club, which limits what can be said about pattern violations at this location. None of the 14 violations cited on March 24 were marked as repeat findings, meaning inspectors did not flag them as problems carried over from a previous documented visit.
What the record does show is a facility that, as of the inspection date, was operating without a valid permit while running a food preparation kitchen, a self-service olive bar, and a retail cooler section. The permit application had been submitted, but the store had not waited for approval.
Zero violations were corrected on site in the sense that none were resolved before the inspection began. Several were addressed during the visit, including the sewage backup, the cooler repairs, and the removal of unlabeled and improperly stored products. The absence of a certified food protection manager was not resolved during the inspection.