An employee touched a floor bucket then reached for aluminum foil over a pot of food without washing her hands.

TAMPA, FL. Back in March 2026, a state inspector at Metro Meat Market watched a kitchen employee touch a bucket that had been sitting on the floor, then reach for aluminum foil to cover a pot of food without stopping to wash her hands.

That single observation, recorded by a Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services inspector on March 24, 2026, was among five violations documented at the Tampa grocery store. One was a priority violation. One was a repeat.

What Inspectors Found

The handwashing problems extended beyond that one employee. In the meat department, the inspector found the handwashing sink blocked, with sponges and a hose sitting inside it. Separately, a kitchen employee had been using the handwashing sink to wash a bucket that had been stored on the floor, which is not what handwashing sinks are for.

The kitchen also had no soap and no paper towels available at the handwashing sink when the inspector arrived.

Neither the meat department nor the kitchen had sanitizer solution prepared at the three-compartment sinks, which are the designated stations for cleaning and sanitizing equipment and utensils.

The store also had no certified food protection manager on staff. That violation was marked as a repeat.

All five violations were noted as corrected on site. The employee washed her hands. The blocked sink was cleared. Soap and paper towels were provided. Sanitizer was mixed. The record does not indicate any stop sale orders were issued.

What These Violations Mean

The hand hygiene violation at Metro Meat Market was the most direct public health concern in this inspection. An employee who touches a contaminated surface, such as a bucket that had been on the floor, and then handles food or food-contact materials without washing her hands creates a direct route for bacteria to reach what customers buy. In a meat market, where raw proteins are handled throughout the day, that route is especially short.

Blocked handwashing sinks are cited as priority foundation violations because they remove the ability to break that contamination route at all. If the sink in the meat department had sponges and a hose in it, employees working in that area could not wash their hands even if they wanted to. The fact that another employee was using a handwashing sink as a utility basin compounds the problem: it treats the one station designed for hand hygiene as general-purpose equipment.

The absence of soap and paper towels at the kitchen handwashing sink is the same failure from a different angle. A sink that is physically accessible but stocked with nothing does not function as a handwashing station.

The lack of sanitizer at the three-compartment sinks in both the meat department and the kitchen means that equipment and utensils being washed in those areas were going through a cleaning process without the final sanitizing step. Cleaning removes visible debris. Sanitizing kills pathogens. Skipping the second step leaves surfaces that look clean but may not be.

The Longer Record

Metro Meat Market has a short inspection history in the FDACS database. The March 2026 visit was the third focused inspection on record for this location.

The two prior inspections, conducted in January 2026 and December 2022, each resulted in zero violations. That makes the March 2026 findings stand out rather than fit into a pattern of chronic problems.

One finding, however, does repeat. The absence of a certified food protection manager was flagged in March 2026 and marked as a violation the store had been cited for before. The state requires at least one employee at a food establishment to hold a valid food protection manager certification, and that requirement had not been met at this location as of the March inspection date.

The certification requirement is not a paperwork technicality. A certified food protection manager is the person responsible for ensuring that employees understand and follow safe food handling practices, including the hand hygiene and sanitizing procedures that broke down in March. Having that role unfilled correlates with the kind of gaps the inspector documented.

All violations were recorded as corrected during the March 24 inspection visit. The certification lapse, which requires a staff member to complete and pass a formal food safety exam, is not the kind of problem that can be resolved by the time an inspector finishes writing her report.