PANAMA CITY BEACH, FL. Back in December 2025, state inspectors walked into the deli section of Winn-Dixie #0494 on Panama City Beach and found chicken tenders sitting in the hot self-serve case at internal temperatures between 102°F and 118°F, more than 30 degrees below the 135°F minimum required to keep hot-held food safe.
That was not the only item. Meatballs registered at 128°F. Mashed potatoes measured 132°F. French fries ranged from 104°F to 120°F. Collard greens came in between 120°F and 128°F. The manager told inspectors all the food had been made approximately one hour prior and directed employees to reheat everything to proper temperature before the inspection concluded.
What Inspectors Found
The deli's retail cooler had its own temperature problem. Assorted sandwiches made roughly thirty minutes before the inspection were not at or below the required 41°F. A ham slider measured 44°F. Two items, a turkey slider and a turkey and swiss sandwich, each measured 48°F. The manager responded by directing an employee to move the sandwiches to the walk-in freezer for rapid cooling.
Two of the four violations documented that day were repeats, meaning inspectors had cited the store for the same problems on a prior visit. In the bakery walk-in cooler, inspectors found multiple cases of food stored directly on the floor, a violation of the requirement that food be kept at least six inches above the floor in a clean, dry location. That finding was flagged as a repeat.
The second repeat violation came from the deli. Inspectors noted that written procedures were not available for the process used to hold food on time as a public health control for multiple time-marked items in the deli's hot case. That is also classified as a priority foundation violation, meaning it underpins how the store is supposed to document and justify its food safety practices.
None of the four violations were corrected on site at the time of documentation, though the manager directed corrective actions for both temperature violations during the inspection.
What These Violations Mean
Hot-held food that drops below 135°F does not immediately become dangerous, but the longer it sits in the temperature range between 41°F and 135°F, the greater the opportunity for bacteria like Salmonella and Staphylococcus aureus to multiply. Chicken tenders at 102°F, sitting in a self-serve case where a customer could pick them up without any additional cooking, represent a direct exposure risk. The manager's claim that the food was made one hour prior does not eliminate the concern; it means the food had already spent an hour in an unsafe temperature zone before inspectors arrived.
The sandwich temperature violations in the retail cooler carry a similar logic. Sliced deli meats like turkey and ham are ready-to-eat foods, meaning there is no cooking step to kill any bacteria that accumulate during improper cooling. A turkey slider at 48°F, made thirty minutes earlier and still dropping toward safe temperature, is a product that a shopper could have purchased and eaten without any warning that it had not been handled correctly.
The missing written procedures for time-as-a-public-health-control are not a paperwork technicality. When a facility uses time rather than temperature to control food safety, those written procedures are the record that shows inspectors, and the public, that the system is being followed. Without them, there is no way to verify how long any given item has been in the case or when it should have been discarded.
Food stored on the floor of the bakery walk-in cooler is a contamination risk. Floors accumulate moisture, debris, and pathogens that can transfer to packaging and, from there, to food.
The Longer Record
The December 16, 2025 inspection was the fifth FDACS inspection on record for this location. The store's history is uneven. A focused inspection in October 2025, roughly ten weeks before the December visit, found zero violations. A full inspection in May 2024 found six violations. A focused inspection in January 2024 found none. A full inspection in September 2023 found three violations.
The pattern that stands out is the gap between focused inspections, which tend to be narrower in scope, and full sanitation inspections, which consistently turn up violations at this location. Every full inspection in the record produced violations. The October 2025 focused inspection with zero violations preceded a December full inspection with four violations, including two repeats.
The repeat designations are particularly significant. A violation marked as a repeat means inspectors documented the same deficiency at a prior visit and the store was expected to have corrected it. The bakery floor storage and the missing deli written procedures were both cited before December 2025 and were still present when inspectors returned.
The store met sanitation inspection requirements on December 16, meaning it was not ordered closed and was allowed to continue operating. The two temperature violations were addressed during the inspection through manager-directed corrective actions. The two repeat violations, the food stored on the bakery floor and the absent written procedures in the deli, had no corrected-on-site notation in the inspection record.
