CORAL GABLES, FL. Back in March 2026, state inspectors visiting Ricky Bakery on Coral Gables found multiple trays of cheese pastries and ground beef pastries sitting on the counter at temperatures between 95 and 98 degrees Fahrenheit, packaged and ready to sell, more than 40 degrees below the 135-degree threshold required to keep hot food safe.
The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services conducted the inspection on March 10, 2026. Inspectors documented 10 total violations, including three priority violations and two repeat citations, and none were corrected on site before the inspection closed.
What Inspectors Found
The pastry temperature finding was the most immediate food safety concern. Inspectors noted the trays had been placed on the counter less than two hours before the visit. Staff moved them to the walk-in freezer during the inspection, where they reached 41 degrees or below.
Sliced ham and cheese, cut less than an hour before the inspection, were also found at 47 to 52 degrees inside a reach-in cooler preparation table, above the 41-degree maximum for cold-held ready-to-eat foods. Those were moved to the walk-in cooler and brought back into compliance during the visit.
Inspectors also documented that food employees were not washing their hands between entering and exiting various food processing areas, and were not washing before putting on gloves to handle food for customer orders. The inspector noted that employees washed their hands after the issue was raised and that proper procedures were discussed with management.
A hand wash sink in the food service area had no hot water running at the time of inspection. Hot water was turned on during the visit.
Flans and tres leches desserts inside a reach-in cooler, made more than 24 hours before the inspection, carried no date markings. All were labeled before inspectors left.
The Repeat Violations
Two of the ten citations were repeats, meaning inspectors had cited the same problems at this location before.
The first was the absence of a handwashing reminder sign at the hand wash sink. The second was unlabeled clear sauce bottles on the preparation table, not identified with a common food name. Both had been documented in a prior inspection, and both were still unresolved when inspectors arrived in March.
An employee's personal drink was found stored inside the reach-in cooler connected to the walk-in, alongside customer food and beverages. A personal lunch bag was also found stored next to foods inside the walk-in cooler itself. Both were removed during the inspection.
The bakery also lacked a consumer advisory posted at the point of sale for food items served undercooked, specifically eggs and beefsteak. And there were no written procedures for employees to follow in the event of a vomit or diarrhea incident on the premises.
What These Violations Mean
The temperature violations at Ricky Bakery are the category that most directly affects shoppers. Hot foods held below 135 degrees and cold foods held above 41 degrees sit in the range where bacteria such as Salmonella and Staph aureus multiply rapidly. Cheese pastries and ground beef pastries at 95 to 98 degrees, packaged for sale on a counter, had already been in that danger zone for some portion of the two hours before inspectors arrived. Sliced ham and cheese at 47 to 52 degrees in a preparation cooler carried the same risk.
The handwashing failure compounds those temperature concerns. Inspectors found employees moving between food processing areas and handling customer orders without washing their hands. In a retail bakery where staff handle both raw and ready-to-eat products, that is a direct contamination pathway.
The missing date marks on flans and tres leches matter for a different reason. Ready-to-eat foods that require refrigeration must be date marked so that staff can track how long they have been stored. Without those labels, there is no way to know whether a dessert has been sitting in the cooler for two days or ten.
The absence of a vomit and diarrhea response procedure is not a paperwork technicality. Without a written protocol, staff have no guidance on how to contain bodily fluid spills in a way that prevents norovirus and similar pathogens from spreading to food contact surfaces.
The Longer Record
The March 10 inspection is not the only entry in Ricky Bakery's state record. A focused inspection followed on March 19, 2026, and that visit produced zero violations, a clean result nine days after the original findings.
The focused inspection suggests that most of the correctable issues identified on March 10 were addressed in the days that followed. But the two repeat violations are the more telling detail. Problems that appear more than once, across separate inspections, indicate that the fixes applied after the first citation did not hold.
The handwashing sign and the unlabeled containers are low-complexity items to resolve. Finding them again on March 10 means they were either not corrected after the prior inspection or were allowed to lapse before the next visit.
None of the ten violations from the March 10 inspection were recorded as corrected on site at the time of that inspection, though the inspector's notes describe several items being addressed during the visit.