HOLLYWOOD, FL. Back in March 2026, state inspectors walked into World Market And Cafe on a routine sanitation check and found in-house prepared meat and cheese pastries sitting in plastic cabinets on the deli case with probed temperatures between 71°F and 82°F. The person in charge told inspectors the pastries had been out for less than an hour. Inspectors ordered them reheated to 165°F on the spot, then properly cooled before being returned to refrigerated sale.
That single finding, logged as a priority violation on March 27, 2026, was among four priority-level citations in a 27-violation inspection at the Hollywood grocery store.
What Inspectors Found
The raw animal food storage problem was equally direct. In the retail display cooler, in-house packaged raw chicken thighs sat directly above in-house packaged pork ribs. Inspectors noted the improper storage and the person in charge corrected it during the visit.
In the processing area, a spray bottle of chemical cleaner was found on a shelf under a prep table alongside open single-service items. An employee's personal medicine was stored on a shelf directly above the food packaging prep table. Both were relocated during the inspection.
The handwashing failures ran through multiple areas of the store. The hand sink at the cashier station had no soap, no paper towels, and was blocked by a plastic tray. Inspectors also found no handwashing signs at the cashier station or in the employee restroom. All three issues were corrected on site.
The store's deli area had its own set of concerns beyond temperature. Multiple employees with long ponytails were wearing visors only, which inspectors noted did not effectively restrain their hair during processing and service. One employee was wearing a bracelet on their wrist while working in the deli.
The lighting in the dry storage room at the back of the building was inadequate. The store's food permit was not posted or available during the inspection.
The Backroom and Processing Area
The backroom and kitchen told their own story. Inspectors documented soil buildup and food spillage along walls and under shelving throughout the backroom, including inside the walk-in coolers and freezer. The processing area had similar buildup under equipment in the kitchen.
Packaged foods were stored directly on the floor in both the dry storage room and the walk-in cooler, a violation of the requirement that food be stored at least six inches above the floor.
The digital thermometer inside the walk-in cooler was not recording temperature. The gasket on a reach-in prep cooler near the oven was damaged and falling off when the door was opened. A drain line at the ware wash sink dripped into a bucket when water drained from the sink.
Unfinished wood was being used as a shelf for a meat grinder in the prep room. The floor step at the packing station was made of unfinished plywood. A soiled apron was hung on a single-service rack alongside open single-service items in the packing room.
Outside, multiple trash cans at the receiving roll-up doors were full and uncovered.
The store also could not produce written procedures for employees to follow in the event of a vomit or diarrhea incident, a priority foundation violation that remained unresolved at the time of inspection.
What These Violations Mean
The temperature violation at the deli case is the most direct public health concern from this inspection. Meat and cheese pastries at 82°F are well above the 41°F threshold required for cold-held food, and above the 70°F threshold that marks the upper boundary of the danger zone where bacteria multiply rapidly. A customer purchasing a pastry that had been sitting at that temperature would have no way of knowing it had not been properly held.
The raw chicken stored above pork ribs in the retail display cooler is a cross-contamination risk. Chicken carries a higher pathogen load than pork and must always be stored below other raw meats. When in-house packaged products are stacked in the wrong order, any leakage from the chicken package can contaminate the product below it before it ever reaches a customer's kitchen.
The chemical cleaner stored above single-service items and the employee medicine stored above the food packaging table are both contamination risks that shoppers would have no visibility into. These are backroom conditions that affect products leaving the store already packaged and labeled.
The handwashing failures at the cashier station, including a blocked sink with no soap and no paper towels, represent a direct gap in basic hygiene at the point of highest customer contact in the store.
The Longer Record
World Market And Cafe's inspection history at this location is thin but not alarming on its face. State records show four prior FDACS inspections on file, all of them focused inspections that resulted in zero violations: two in August 2022 and two more in March 2026, both conducted after the March 27 sanitation inspection.
The March 16 and March 31 focused inspections, each returning zero violations, suggest that targeted follow-up checks found the store in compliance on specific items. None of the 27 violations cited on March 27 were marked as repeats from prior inspections.
What the record does not show is any prior full sanitation inspection at this location against which to measure the March 2026 findings. The 27 violations, including four at the priority level, were documented across a single visit with no baseline for comparison.
None of the four priority violations were corrected before the inspection ended without corrective action. The written vomit and diarrhea cleanup procedures, which the person in charge could not produce during the March 27 visit, were not listed as corrected on site.