LAKE WORTH, FL. Back in January 2026, state inspectors walked into a Lake Worth supermarket and found steam table food that had dropped as low as 91 degrees, raw fish stored directly above ready-to-eat shrimp, and a written safety procedure that still did not exist, despite inspectors flagging the same gap two weeks earlier.
The inspection of Key Food on January 30, 2026 was a follow-up visit after a January 16 inspection that had produced 26 violations and triggered a re-inspection requirement. The January 30 visit found six violations, two of them priority-level, and one marked as a repeat.
What Inspectors Found
The temperature finding was the most urgent. According to the inspector's notes, yuca, chicken, crispy rice, and empanadas on the steam table registered internal temperatures between 91 and 133 degrees Fahrenheit. State food safety rules require hot-held food to stay at or above 135 degrees at all times.
All of the steam table items were reheated on site and temperatures were verified before the inspector left.
The cross-contamination finding was equally direct. The inspector noted raw fish stored over ready-to-eat shrimp in the reach-in cooler in the food service area. In the retail section, raw bacon was displayed over ready-to-eat hot dogs. Both situations were corrected during the inspection, with all raw items moved to appropriate locations.
The repeat violation involved written procedures for responding to an employee illness or vomiting incident. The inspector noted simply: "No written procedures provided." That same deficiency had been cited during the January 16 inspection, which produced 26 violations and a re-inspection requirement. Two weeks later, the document still had not been created.
What These Violations Mean
The steam table temperature failure is one of the more direct food safety risks a grocery store can present to shoppers. When cooked food drops below 135 degrees and stays there, bacteria that were killed during cooking can begin to multiply again. The window between 41 and 135 degrees is what food safety regulators call the "danger zone." At 91 degrees, the yuca and chicken found on Key Food's steam table had fallen well into that range.
The raw-over-ready-to-eat storage problem carries its own risk. Raw fish and raw bacon can carry pathogens including salmonella and listeria. When stored directly above food that will be eaten without further cooking, any drip or leak transfers those pathogens to the ready-to-eat product. The shrimp and hot dogs below them in Key Food's cooler and display case had no additional cooking step to eliminate that contamination.
The missing written illness procedures matter in a way that is easy to underestimate. When an employee vomits or shows symptoms of a reportable illness at work, a written response plan tells staff exactly what to clean, what to discard, and when to send the employee home. Without that document, the response depends entirely on whoever happens to be in charge at that moment making the right call under pressure. Inspectors flagged this gap twice in two weeks at Key Food, and it remained unresolved at the close of the January 30 visit.
None of the six violations on January 30 were corrected on site in the formal sense tracked by state records. The steam table and cross-contamination issues were addressed during the inspection itself, but the repeat written-procedures violation remained open.
The Longer Record
Key Food, Lake Worth: Inspection History
Key Food's inspection history shows a pattern that repeats across years. In July 2022, an inspection produced 16 violations and a re-inspection requirement. A follow-up visit three days later found zero violations, and a final check later that month found four. The store then passed three consecutive inspections from 2024 through October 2025 without a single violation.
Then January 2026 arrived. The January 16 inspection produced 26 violations, the highest single-visit count in the facility's available record, and triggered another re-inspection requirement. The January 30 follow-up brought that number down to six, and the store met sanitation requirements for that visit.
The written illness procedures violation stands as the clearest evidence of a gap that was not closed between inspections. Inspectors identified it on January 16. They returned on January 30 and found it still unaddressed.