LAKELAND, FL. Back in January 2026, a state inspector walked into a Lakeland convenience store and found raw bacon sitting on a shelf above ready-to-eat food items, a placement that put shoppers at direct risk of cross-contamination without any apparent awareness from the person running the store that day.
The inspection of Trs3 Investments LLC, a convenience store on record with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services as a Significant Food Service and Packaged Ice establishment, was triggered because the business was operating without a valid food permit. The January 21 visit resulted in four violations, including one priority violation and two priority foundation violations, none of which had been corrected on site at the time of the inspection, with one partial exception.
What Inspectors Found
The raw storage violation was the most immediate finding. The inspector's own notes state: "Retail Area, raw bacon being stored over ready to eat food items." During the inspection, the bacon was moved to an appropriate location, which counts as a corrected-on-site resolution for that single violation. The other three violations were not resolved during the visit.
The person in charge that day could not answer basic questions about foodborne illness prevention or employee health policies. The inspector noted plainly: "Person in charge unable to answer questions regarding foodborne illness and employee health." That is a priority foundation violation, meaning it reflects a gap in the foundational knowledge the state expects anyone running a food establishment to have.
The store also had no written procedures in place for employees to follow when cleaning up vomit or diarrhea. The inspector recorded: "Food establishment does not have written procedures for the clean up of vomit and diarrhea." That violation also remained unresolved when the inspector left.
Rounding out the four citations, the establishment had no certified food protection manager on staff, a requirement under Florida food code. No one at the store had passed the required certification exam.
What These Violations Mean
The raw bacon storage violation is the kind of finding that most directly threatens a shopper's health. Raw animal proteins carry bacteria including Salmonella and E. coli. When stored above ready-to-eat products, any drip, leak, or contact can transfer those pathogens to food a customer buys and eats without cooking. In a retail setting, that contamination happens silently, and the shopper has no way to know it occurred.
The person-in-charge knowledge gap compounds every other violation found at this store. State food code requires the person running a food establishment at any given time to understand how foodborne illness spreads, which symptoms require an employee to be excluded from food handling, and how to prevent contamination events. When the person in charge at Trs3 Investments could not answer those questions, it meant the store was operating that day without anyone capable of making an informed food safety decision on the floor.
The missing vomit and diarrhea cleanup procedures are not a paperwork technicality. Norovirus, one of the most common causes of foodborne illness outbreaks in retail and food service settings, spreads through exactly those situations. Written procedures exist to ensure employees contain the event, use the correct disinfectants, and do not inadvertently spread contamination to food contact surfaces or product. A store without those procedures has no documented protocol when an incident occurs.
The absence of a certified food protection manager ties all of this together. Florida requires at least one person per establishment to hold a recognized food safety certification. That certification is the baseline guarantee that someone at the facility has been trained and tested on the principles that prevent the other three violations from occurring in the first place. At Trs3 Investments in January, that baseline was missing.
The Longer Record
The FDACS inspection record for Trs3 Investments LLC does not indicate a lengthy prior inspection history in the data available for this report. What the record does show is that the January 21, 2026 inspection was not a routine scheduled visit. It was triggered specifically because the establishment was operating without a valid food permit, a condition that itself signals a lapse in the basic administrative compliance the state requires before a food business opens its doors to the public.
Operating without a valid permit means the store was selling food products to customers in Lakeland without having met the state's current licensing requirements. That context matters when reading the four violations found during the visit. The store was not just short on paperwork. It was short on a certified manager, short on written emergency procedures, and short on a person in charge who understood the fundamentals of food safety.
None of the three unresolved violations from January, the missing manager certification, the knowledge gap, and the absent cleanup procedures, were corrected during the inspection. The raw bacon was moved. The rest remained open when the inspector closed out the visit.
After the Inspection
The January inspection was classified as an "Operating Without a Valid Food Permit, Met Sanitation" visit, meaning the store cleared the sanitation threshold to remain open despite the permit issue and the outstanding violations. That classification does not mean the violations were resolved. It means the store was not shut down.
Three of the four violations cited that day were still unresolved when the inspector left the building.