WINTER GARDEN, FL. Back in February 2026, state inspectors walked into Travelers Mart 24/7 and found the Winter Garden convenience store operating without a valid food permit, a legal requirement under Florida Statute 500.12 that the store had apparently let lapse before inspectors ever looked at anything else.
That was just the beginning of what the February 6 inspection turned up.
What Inspectors Found
The hot food problem was documented precisely. A tray of french fries and a tray of sausage had been placed in the hot holding unit at 7:00 a.m. When inspectors measured them at 10:55 a.m., nearly four hours later, internal temperatures were running between 112 and 129 degrees Fahrenheit. Florida law requires hot-held food to stay at 135 degrees or above.
A Stop-Sale Order was issued for those items. Management voluntarily discarded them on site.
Cold holding was failing in the back kitchen as well. Cheese and raw chicken stored in a reach-in cooler near the office had internal temperatures between 45 and 47 degrees Fahrenheit, above the 41-degree maximum required for time/temperature control for safety foods. The raw chicken was relocated to a different cooler to cool down. The cheese was voluntarily discarded.
The reach-in cooler itself was issued a Stop-Use Order. Inspectors determined it was not capable of maintaining food at 41 degrees or below, meaning the equipment failure was likely the root cause of the cold holding violations, not just a one-time lapse.
Inspectors also found raw shell eggs stored above various ready-to-eat foods on shelving in the same back kitchen cooler. Eggs were relocated during the inspection.
The Kratom and Hemp Violations
The store was also selling kratom products that did not comply with Florida emergency rule 5KER25-6. That rule requires kratom products to be labeled with the concentration of 7-Hydroxymitragynine, a potent active compound, expressed in parts per million on a dry-weight basis. The products on the shelf at Travelers Mart 24/7 were missing that information entirely. Management voluntarily discarded the mislabeled kratom products during the inspection, and a supplemental report was issued.
The hemp product violation was a repeat. Inspectors had flagged the same problem before: hemp products on the shelf did not have a scannable barcode or quick response code linked to a Certificate of Analysis, as required under Florida Statute 581.217(7). The store had been cited for this previously and the problem persisted.
Multiple Stop-Sale Orders citing misbranding under Florida Statute 500.11 were issued during the visit, several of which were subsequently released after products were discarded or documentation was addressed.
What These Violations Mean
The temperature violations are the most immediate food safety concern for anyone who bought prepared food at this store. When hot food drops below 135 degrees Fahrenheit, bacteria that were suppressed by heat begin to multiply. By the time those french fries and sausage were measured at 112 to 129 degrees at Travelers Mart 24/7, they had been in the danger zone for an extended period. Customers who purchased hot food from that unit before inspectors arrived had no way of knowing the holding temperature had failed.
Cold holding failures carry the same logic in reverse. Cheese and raw chicken held at 45 to 47 degrees instead of 41 degrees or below are in conditions where pathogens including Salmonella and Listeria grow faster than they would at proper refrigeration temperatures. The fact that a piece of equipment, not just a handling error, was responsible for the cold holding failure at Travelers Mart 24/7 makes the violation more serious, not less.
The kratom labeling requirement exists for a specific reason. 7-Hydroxymitragynine is significantly more potent than mitragynine, the compound most people associate with kratom, and its concentration varies widely across products. Without that PPM figure on the label, a consumer has no way to make an informed decision about dosage or potency. Florida's emergency rule requiring that disclosure was in effect at the time of this inspection, and the products on the shelf did not comply.
Operating without a valid food permit means the store was outside the state's regulatory oversight framework entirely. Permit requirements exist so that facilities are subject to routine inspection cycles. A store operating without one has, in effect, removed itself from that system.
The Longer Record
The repeat violation on hemp product labeling is the clearest indicator of a pattern at Travelers Mart 24/7. Inspectors had previously cited the store for failing to ensure hemp products carried a scannable barcode or QR code linked to a Certificate of Analysis. The violation appeared again on February 6, uncorrected.
The inspection type itself tells part of the story. This was classified as an "Operating Without a Valid Food Permit" inspection, meaning inspectors were already there for a compliance reason before they found the temperature failures, the mislabeled kratom, the faulty cooler, and the raw eggs stored above ready-to-eat food. Ten violations, including three priority violations, emerged from a visit that began because the store's permit had lapsed.
None of the violations were corrected before the inspection began. Several were corrected on site during the visit, including the temperature violations through voluntary discards and the raw egg storage issue. The Stop-Use Order on the reach-in cooler, however, remained in place at the conclusion of the inspection, meaning the equipment that contributed to the cold holding failures was still out of service when inspectors left.