LAKELAND, FL. Back in December 2025, a state food safety inspector walked into the food service area at Just Move Athletic Club, a minor food outlet inside the Lakeland fitness facility, and found that the person in charge could not correctly answer questions about foodborne illnesses and their symptoms.
That finding was one of four Priority Foundation violations documented during the December 16 inspection, all of them left unresolved when the inspector walked out.
What Inspectors Found
The handwash sink in the food service area was blocked by the establishment's own chemical spray bottles. The inspector moved the bottles to a new location during the visit, making that the only one of the seven violations corrected on site.
The remaining six were not resolved before the inspector left, including the finding that no probe thermometer was available anywhere in the food service area.
The inspector also noted that the facility had no documentation showing that employees are required to report foodborne illness symptoms to the person in charge. No written procedures existed for handling vomiting or diarrheal events in the food service area. That second finding was marked as a repeat violation.
The facility's current food permit was not displayed as required by Florida law. A brown stain was visible on ceiling tiles directly above the handwash sink.
The Repeat Violation
The missing cleanup procedures for vomiting and diarrheal events had been cited before. State records show the same deficiency appeared in the facility's prior FDACS inspection, conducted in August 2022. The inspector provided the establishment with a cleanup guidance handout during the December visit, the same kind of corrective guidance that would have been available three years earlier.
That is the definition of a repeat violation: the same gap, the same category, documented across two separate inspections years apart.
What These Violations Mean
A person in charge who cannot correctly answer questions about foodborne illnesses and their symptoms is not a paperwork problem. That individual is the last line of defense against a food handler showing up sick and serving customers. When the inspector documented that the person in charge at Just Move Athletic Club failed that basic knowledge check, it meant the facility's oversight function was not operating as required.
The missing employee health reporting documentation compounds that gap. Without a formal agreement requiring employees to report symptoms like vomiting, diarrhea, jaundice, or sore throat with lesions to the person in charge, there is no documented system to catch a sick worker before they handle food. The inspector provided the establishment with a reporting agreement handout, but the agreement itself did not exist at the time of inspection.
The absence of a probe thermometer is a practical problem with direct consequences. Without one, there is no way for staff to verify that food being held or served is at a safe temperature. For a food outlet inside a gym, where items like protein shakes, pre-packaged foods, or prepared snacks may be held for extended periods, that gap removes the most basic tool for catching temperature abuse before it reaches a customer.
The blocked handwash sink, while corrected during the visit, reflects a routine failure. Chemical spray bottles stored in front of a handwash sink mean employees either wash their hands somewhere else, or they do not wash them at all. The inspector's correction took seconds. The question is how long the sink had been blocked before the inspector arrived.
The Longer Record
Just Move Athletic Club has two FDACS inspections on record at this location. The first, from August 2022, resulted in 13 violations and still met inspection requirements. The December 2025 inspection produced 7 violations, also meeting requirements.
The 2022 inspection was more voluminous in raw violation count, but the December 2025 inspection carried a specific weight: a repeat violation in the same category as something documented more than three years prior, combined with four Priority Foundation findings across the board.
A facility with only two inspections on record does not carry the same documented history as one with dozens of visits. But two inspections with a repeat violation connecting them is a pattern, not a coincidence. The cleanup procedures for vomiting and diarrheal events were missing in 2022. They were still missing in December 2025.
Six of the seven violations cited in December remained unresolved when the inspector left the facility.
