FORT LAUDERDALE, FL. Back in March 2026, state inspectors walked into the deli section of a Fort Lauderdale Winn-Dixie and found chicken wings holding at between 105 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit, rice and beans at 105 to 115 degrees, and macaroni and cheese at 120 to 125 degrees. Every item was supposed to be at 135 degrees or above. None of them were close.
The inspection of Winn-Dixie #0290, located in Fort Lauderdale, was conducted on March 27, 2026, by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Inspectors documented five violations in total, including one priority violation for the temperature failures at the hot buffet.
What Inspectors Found
The temperature violations were the most urgent finding. According to the inspection record, inspectors observed "multiple food items measured out of temperature at hot buffet," with the lowest reading, 105 degrees, recorded for both chicken wings and rice and beans. The items were reheated to a minimum of 165 degrees before the inspector left, making this the one violation corrected on site during the visit.
The store's person in charge was unable to answer basic questions about foodborne illness and employee reporting responsibilities. The inspector provided a copy of employee health guidance and a reporting agreement by email. That gap in knowledge is its own category of concern, separate from the temperature readings.
Inspectors also noted the store had no written procedures for handling a vomit or diarrhea discharge on the premises. Under state food safety code, establishments are required to have documented cleanup protocols that address how to minimize contamination spread and protect employees and customers. The inspector provided guidance by email.
A hand wash sink in the employee women's restroom had no paper towels or hand-drying device. Paper towels were provided during the inspection. In the produce section, ceiling tiles were found in disrepair. That structural issue was not corrected during the visit.
Foam trays used for meat packaging were not stored in their original protective packaging on shelves above equipment and preparation tables. No stop sale orders were issued during this inspection.
What These Violations Mean
The hot buffet temperature failures are the most direct food safety concern for anyone who bought deli items from this store on March 27, 2026. When hot foods drop below 135 degrees, bacteria that were suppressed by heat begin to multiply. Chicken, in particular, is a known carrier of Salmonella and Campylobacter. Holding chicken wings at 105 to 120 degrees for an unknown period of time creates conditions for bacterial growth that reheating may not fully reverse if the food has been in the danger zone for too long. The inspector's record does not indicate how long the items had been out of temperature before the visit.
The finding that the person in charge could not correctly answer questions about foodborne illness reporting is a structural problem, not a one-time lapse. State food safety rules require that someone in authority at every food establishment know when sick employees must be excluded from work and how to report illness to regulators. When that knowledge is absent at the management level, the risk of a sick employee handling food, and potentially spreading illness to customers, increases.
The missing vomit and diarrhea cleanup procedures may sound like paperwork, but the underlying requirement exists because norovirus, one of the most common causes of foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States, spreads rapidly through contaminated surfaces. Without written protocols, staff have no standardized guidance on how to contain and disinfect an incident, which raises the risk of cross-contamination reaching food or food-contact surfaces.
The Longer Record
The March 2026 inspection was the seventh on record for this location in FDACS files. The store's history is uneven. Three focused inspections, conducted in February 2026, November 2024, and November 2023, each returned zero violations. Focused inspections, however, are narrower in scope than full sanitation inspections and are not directly comparable.
The two most recent full sanitation inspections before March 2026 both turned up significant violation counts. An inspection in August 2023 found 10 violations. An inspection in November 2022 found 11. Both resulted in the store meeting inspection requirements, but neither produced a clean record. The March 2026 inspection, with five violations including a priority finding, fits into a pattern where full inspections at this location have consistently produced multiple citations.
None of the five violations documented in March 2026 were marked as repeats from prior inspections. That means inspectors did not flag any of these specific issues as having been cited before. The prior violation totals from 2022 and 2023 are not broken down by category in the available data, so a direct comparison of violation types across years is not possible.
What Remained Unresolved
Of the five violations documented on March 27, 2026, the temperature failures were corrected during the inspection after staff reheated all affected deli items to 165 degrees. Paper towels were also provided at the hand wash sink before the inspector left.
The disrepair of ceiling tiles in the produce section was not corrected on site.