ST. PETE BEACH, FL. State inspectors found food from unapproved or unknown sources at Twistee Treat on Gulf Boulevard during a September 14 visit, one of nine high-severity violations documented at the St. Pete Beach location that day. The facility was not closed.
The inspection also turned up inadequate handwashing, improper handwashing technique, no employee health policy, food in poor condition, improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, misuse of time as a public health control, and no consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods. That is nine high-priority citations in a single visit, plus five intermediate violations. The restaurant continued serving customers.
What Inspectors Found
The food-from-unapproved-sources citation is among the most serious on the list. When food bypasses USDA or FDA inspection channels, there is no traceability if a customer gets sick. Health officials cannot trace an outbreak back to a supplier, cannot issue a recall, and cannot determine how many other locations received the same product.
The handwashing violations are cited twice in the same inspection, once for inadequate handwashing and once for improper technique. Those are two distinct failures: employees not washing hands when they should, and employees washing hands incorrectly when they do. Both leave pathogens on hands that then transfer directly to food or food-contact surfaces.
The absence of a written employee health policy compounds every other violation on the list. Without a policy requiring sick workers to stay home or report symptoms, a single employee with Norovirus can expose every customer served during a shift. Norovirus accounts for roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and food workers are a primary transmission route.
The person-in-charge violation rounds out the picture. When no manager is actively overseeing operations, the research shows critical violations accumulate at roughly three times the rate of supervised kitchens. At Twistee Treat on September 14, that dynamic appears to have played out across 14 separate citations.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of unapproved food sourcing and inadequate cold-holding equipment is a specific compounding risk. Food that originates outside inspected supply chains and is then stored in equipment that cannot maintain safe temperatures creates a window for bacterial growth that inspectors cannot easily quantify during a single visit.
The time-as-public-health-control violation adds another layer. Some foods are permitted to sit in the temperature danger zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, if operators track the time precisely and discard the food before it becomes unsafe. When that tracking fails or is not done at all, there is no backstop. The food sits, the bacteria multiply, and no one is counting.
Single-use items being reused is an intermediate violation, but at a soft-serve ice cream shop it carries a specific context. Cups, lids, and dispensing tools that are designed for one use and then reused become contamination vectors between customers, particularly when cleaning and sanitizing protocols are already cited as failing elsewhere in the same inspection.
The inadequate toilet facilities citation matters for a reason beyond the obvious. When employee restroom infrastructure is inadequate or poorly maintained, employees are less likely to use it, and less likely to wash their hands afterward. At a location where handwashing failures were already cited twice in the same visit, the toilet facilities finding is not a minor housekeeping note.
The Longer Record
Twistee Treat Gulf Blvd: Inspection History
The September 14 inspection is not an anomaly. State records show 15 inspections on file for this location, with 97 total violations documented across those visits. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
The March 2026 inspection, just six months before September's visit, produced seven high-severity violations. The May 2026 follow-up showed only one. Then September arrived with nine. That pattern, a spike followed by a drop followed by a larger spike, has repeated across this location's history. January 2024 produced five high-severity violations. January 2025 produced two. March 2026 produced seven.
The location has accumulated high-severity violations in every calendar year with inspections on record going back to 2021. The categories shift, but the volume does not.
After nine high-severity violations and five intermediate citations on September 14, 2026, the Twistee Treat at 6900 Gulf Boulevard remained open for business.
