WINTER GARDEN, FL. Back in December, state inspectors walked into a Winter Garden convenience store and found hot food that wasn't hot enough, raw meat stored above ready-to-eat items, and a chemical sitting over food in the walk-in cooler, all on the same visit.
The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services inspected TN Food and Grocery, a convenience store on the city's food service registry, on December 18, 2025. Inspectors documented three violations, all three of them priority-level findings.
What Inspectors Found
The most serious finding involved the store's food prep area. According to the inspection record, potato wedges, chicken wings, tamales and egg sandwiches all had internal temperatures between 108 and 122 degrees F. State food safety rules require hot-held food to stay at or above 135 degrees F.
The inspector noted that the food items were reheated to 165 degrees and higher before the visit ended. That correction happened on site.
In the walk-in cooler, inspectors found raw bacon stored directly over ready-to-eat food. The inspector noted the bacon was moved to proper storage during the visit. Also in the walk-in cooler, a chemical was stored above ready-to-eat foods. That, too, was relocated on site.
None of the three violations were marked as repeats from a prior inspection.
What These Violations Mean
The temperature finding is the most straightforward public health concern. When hot food drops below 135 degrees F, bacteria that heat had suppressed can begin multiplying again. Chicken, egg sandwiches and tamales are all protein-dense foods where pathogens like Salmonella and Staphylococcus aureus grow rapidly in the temperature range between 70 and 125 degrees. Food sitting at 108 degrees in a display or holding unit is not being kept safe, it is slowly becoming a risk.
The raw bacon finding is a cross-contamination problem. Raw animal proteins carry bacteria that ready-to-eat foods, things a customer picks up and eats without any further cooking, cannot survive. Storing raw bacon above items like prepared sandwiches or deli products means any drip or leak from the raw meat falls directly onto food that will not be cooked again.
The chemical storage violation is a contamination risk of a different kind. Cleaning agents and other toxic materials stored above open or exposed food can introduce poisons into products that customers then buy and consume. The walk-in cooler at TN Food and Grocery had both a raw meat problem and a chemical storage problem in the same space on the same day.
All three violations were corrected on site during the December 18 visit, according to inspection records. No stop sale orders were issued.
The Longer Record
The December 18 visit was not the most alarming inspection on record for this location. That distinction belongs to a visit just fifteen days earlier.
On December 3, 2025, FDACS inspectors returned to TN Food and Grocery and documented 16 violations, including one repeat violation, a finding serious enough to require a re-inspection. The December 18 visit, which produced three priority violations, was that follow-up. The store met sanitation inspection requirements on December 18, meaning it cleared the bar set after the December 3 failure.
Before December 2025, the inspection record looks markedly different. A focused inspection on May 5, 2025 found zero violations. A focused inspection on April 3, 2023 also found zero violations.
That gap between the clean focused inspections earlier in the year and the 16-violation finding in early December is the detail worth noting. Focused inspections are typically narrower in scope than full sanitation inspections, so direct comparisons require some care. But the store's December 3 record, with 16 violations and a repeat finding, represents a significant departure from what inspectors had previously documented there.
Where Things Stood After December 18
The three priority violations from December 18 were each addressed before the inspector left. The bacon was moved. The chemical was relocated. The food was reheated. On paper, the store met requirements by the end of that visit.
What the record does not show is whether the conditions that produced 16 violations on December 3 were fully resolved, or whether the December 18 clearance reflects a store that corrected the specific items flagged that day. The December 3 inspection, the one that triggered the re-inspection requirement, found one repeat violation, meaning at least one problem had been documented at the location before and had not been fixed.
The inspection record for TN Food and Grocery now includes four visits, two with zero findings, one with sixteen, and one with three priority violations corrected on site.
