At a supermarket in Coral Springs, inspectors saw knives being stuck where they shouldn’t be, whole chickens being used as bacterial battleships, and hand-washing not being given much importance.

Florida Department of Agriculture inspectors’ August 20 visit to Key Food, 10301 Royal Palm Blvd., ended with the supermarket being required to be re-inspected before Tuesday, September 3.

The owner of this Key Food supermarket, according to the inspection, is listed as 10301 Royal Palm Food Corp., which is led by President Juan Diaz of Coral Springs, Vice President Raifiz Vargas of Weston and Secretary Alejandro Paulino of Boca Raton, according to state records. The same trio also runs the ownership corporation of the Key Food at 10400 NW Seventh Ave. in North Miami-Dade, which tread water during a June 2023 inspection.

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Diaz, Vargas and Paulino’s Coral Springs Key Food repeated some of the shortcomings of their Key Food location in North Miami-Dade, but it also gave inspectors Bryan Kirkconnell and Timothy O’Neil a twist of its own.

▪ “At the beginning of the visit, there was no hot water available.”

▪ “Knives used for cutting fish and stored between the wall and the sink between uses.”

▪ The “knife rack next to the meat saw was broken and dirty with old food scraps.”

▪ A food service employee “washed a spatula without cleaning and disinfecting it and preparing it for service.”

▪ In the food area, utensils were “stored in a bucket under the steam table and not turned over or stored to prevent contamination.”

▪ Food processing employees “did not wash their hands between entering and exiting the various processing areas before returning to put on gloves and/or handle clean utensils to prepare food for customers.”

▪ The handwashing sink in the produce section had “bags of produce” stored on it, so if food didn’t interfere with handwashing, it was at least getting splashed by the dirty hands being washed.

▪ The hand basin in the dining area contained single-use items.

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▪ “Unwashed produce was left on the cutting board while an employee prepared ready-to-eat food.”

▪ Watermelons that were offered for sale and cut the day before should have been cooled to below 41 degrees for food safety reasons. Instead, their internal temperature was 53 to 60 degrees. The sale of the watermelon was stopped.

▪ Over at the food service hot counter, the whole chickens and pork shoulder measured 46 to 49 degrees after four hours in the hot counter. Stop Sales threw both in the trash.

▪ There were flies on the returned products and the mop sink in the back room.

▪ “Boxes of raw chicken were on the floor of the prep room.”

▪ Inspectors noticed “accumulations of dirt and old food debris above the cutting table in the kitchen, next to the preparation sink” in the food processing area.

▪ In the meat and produce department and in the food processing area, wipes were not stored in a disinfectant solution between uses.

▪ Pans that were “encrusted with grease” hung above the three-compartment sink in the food area.