MIAMI, FL. Back in March 2026, state inspectors walked into Tamiami Petro Inc, a Miami convenience store with a food service operation, and found a pastry hot box full of food that had no business being served to customers, empanadas measured as low as 115 degrees Fahrenheit, chicken croquettes at 120, and tequenos at 125, all well below the 135-degree minimum required to keep hot-held food safe.
The inspection, conducted March 6, 2026 by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, turned up seven total violations, three of them priority-level, the category reserved for findings that carry the most direct risk of foodborne illness.
What Inspectors Found
The hot box violations were the most acute finding. Inspector notes documented chicken croquettes at 120 degrees, tequenos at 125, and a range of empanadas, meat, chicken, ham and cheese, and spinach varieties, measuring between 115 and 128 degrees. All of those items were reheated to a minimum of 165 degrees before the inspector left.
In the reach-in cooler, raw shell eggs were sitting on a shelf directly above containers of ready-to-eat ham and cheese. The inspector noted the eggs were moved to an appropriate location during the visit.
A cold unit holding ham, cheeses, and milk was found at an ambient temperature of 45 degrees. A gallon of milk inside that same unit measured 44 degrees, four degrees above the 41-degree maximum for cold-held food. The unit was repaired during the inspection and the milk was moved to proper refrigeration.
The display case holding multiple sandwich varieties had a separate problem. None of the sandwiches were labeled with the time they were placed under time-as-a-public-health-control, a method that requires precise documentation to be valid. Inspectors noted all items were properly labeled before they left.
Outside, the dumpster was missing its drain plug. That violation was not noted as corrected on site.
What These Violations Mean
Hot-held food that drops below 135 degrees enters what food safety regulators call the temperature danger zone, the range between 41 and 135 degrees where bacteria multiply rapidly. Empanadas sitting at 115 degrees have likely been in that zone long enough for bacterial counts to climb. At a convenience store where customers grab food quickly and without much scrutiny, there is no reliable way for a shopper to know the croquette in the warmer has been sitting at an unsafe temperature.
The raw egg storage violation at Tamiami Petro carries a different but equally direct risk. Raw shell eggs are a known salmonella vector. When they are stored above ready-to-eat foods like ham and cheese, any leakage or shell contamination falls directly onto food that will not be cooked again before a customer eats it. The inspector's own notes described the eggs sitting on a shelf above containers of ready-to-eat ham and cheese inside the reach-in cooler.
The unlabeled sandwiches in the display case matter because time-as-a-public-health-control is only a legitimate safety method when the time is actually tracked. Without a label showing when a sandwich moved off temperature control, there is no way to know whether it has been sitting out for 30 minutes or three hours.
The missing dumpster drain plug is the least urgent finding on the list, but it creates conditions for liquid waste accumulation that attracts pests. It was the one violation left unresolved when the inspector closed out the report.
The Longer Record
The March 2026 inspection was not the first time FDACS inspectors visited this location. Records show one prior inspection on file, conducted April 10, 2024, which turned up three violations and also resulted in a met-inspection-requirements outcome.
That 2024 visit produced a lighter violation count, three compared to seven in March 2026, and the categories of those earlier violations are not detailed in the current record. What the record does show is that the store went nearly two years between inspections and came back with more than double the violations, including three at the priority level.
None of the seven violations documented in March 2026 were marked as repeat findings, meaning inspectors did not flag them as problems that had been cited before. The store has a short inspection history at this location, with only two inspections on record.
The March 2026 inspection closed with a met-sanitation-inspection-requirements determination, meaning the facility was not ordered closed and was considered to have addressed the most critical issues before the inspector left. Six of the seven violations were corrected on site.
The dumpster outside, still missing its drain plug when the inspector finished, was the one item left unresolved.