LAKE CITY, FL. Back in December 2025, state inspectors walked into a Lake City convenience store and found chicken tenders sitting in a hot hold case at 120 degrees F, fifteen degrees below the minimum safe temperature required to keep hot food out of the bacterial danger zone.
That finding at S&S Food Stores #0333 on a December 9 Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services inspection was one of three priority violations documented that day. The store met sanitation inspection requirements overall, but the record left behind is specific and worth reading.
What Inspectors Found
The chicken tenders were voluntarily discarded during the inspection. The inspector noted the food processing area specifically, meaning these were items being prepared or held for customer purchase at the store's food service counter, not sealed packaged goods on a shelf.
In the walk-in cooler, raw pork was stored directly above ready-to-eat products. The inspector noted the violation and the raw pork was moved during the inspection. That correction happened on the spot, but the arrangement had already existed when the inspector arrived.
An employee in the food processing area was observed not washing his hands before putting on gloves. The inspector's note is direct: the employee skipped hand-washing before donning gloves. Gloves do not substitute for hand-washing, and inspectors treat the two as separate, sequential requirements.
The handwashing sink next to the bulk ice maker in the back room was blocked by boxes. Inspectors noted the boxes were moved during the inspection, restoring access. A separate finding flagged that the store had no written procedures prepared, maintained on-site, or available upon request for the use of time without temperature control as a public health control for holding food, a foundational documentation requirement for any establishment that holds time-sensitive food without continuous temperature monitoring.
The serving spoon storage violation, cited as a repeat, was the fifth violation of the day. Inspectors noted that serving spoons in the back room were not stored inverted. They were inverted during the inspection.
What These Violations Mean
Chicken tenders held at 120°F instead of the required 135°F or above are sitting in what food safety regulators call the danger zone, the temperature range between 41°F and 135°F where bacteria like Salmonella and Staphylococcus aureus multiply rapidly. A customer who purchased those tenders before the inspector arrived would have had no way of knowing the food had been held at an unsafe temperature. The voluntary discard during the inspection removed that risk for anyone who came in after, but not before.
Raw pork stored above ready-to-eat products is a direct cross-contamination risk. Raw pork can carry pathogens including Salmonella and Yersinia enterocolitica. If raw juices drip from improperly wrapped or stored pork onto foods that will not be cooked again before a customer eats them, those customers have no kill step protecting them. This is why storage hierarchy in walk-in coolers, raw proteins on the bottom, ready-to-eat foods above, is a non-negotiable baseline in food safety.
The hand-washing violation matters because gloves create a false sense of barrier protection when they are put on over unwashed hands. Contaminants already present on the hands transfer to the glove surface immediately and can then transfer to food. At a food processing area inside a convenience store, where employees may handle raw product and then prepared food in close sequence, that pathway is direct.
A blocked handwashing sink is not a minor housekeeping issue. When the sink cannot be reached quickly, employees skip washing. The boxes in front of the sink next to the bulk ice maker were a physical barrier to a legal requirement. Ice sold to customers for consumption is a food product under Florida law, and the proximity of the blockage to the ice maker makes the finding more pointed.
The Longer Record
The December 2025 inspection was not the first time inspectors had documented problems at this location. FDACS records show a prior inspection on October 7, 2024, which also resulted in five violations and also met sanitation inspection requirements.
The repeat citation for serving spoons not stored inverted connects those two inspections directly. That specific violation was present in the prior record and present again fourteen months later. Repeat violations in state inspection records indicate that a corrective action taken during one inspection did not hold as a permanent practice.
Two inspections on record is a limited history, but the consistency of the violation count, five both times, and the confirmed repeat finding suggest that at least some of what inspectors documented in December had been documented before.
What Remained Unresolved
Four of the five violations were corrected on site during the December inspection. The chicken tenders were discarded, the raw pork was moved, the boxes were cleared from the sink, and the serving spoons were inverted. The employee hand-washing violation was observed and documented but the inspection record does not indicate a corrective action notation for that specific finding.
The written procedures violation, the store's failure to have documentation on hand for the use of time as a public health control, was noted in the inspection record without a corrected-on-site notation. That paperwork did not exist during the inspection.
