PORT ORANGE, FL. State inspectors walked into Kozy Korner Grub and Pub at 5901 S. Ridgewood on July 31 and left with nine high-severity violations documented, including findings that no one responsible for food safety was running the floor and that staff had demonstrated no allergen awareness whatsoever. The restaurant was not closed.
The nine high-severity citations place this inspection among the worst in the facility's recorded history. Three additional intermediate violations brought the total to twelve for a single visit.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector found no person in charge present or performing duties, a citation that signals a kitchen running without oversight. Alongside that, staff had no written employee health policy in place and were not reporting illness symptoms to management.
Those two findings together are a documented recipe for an outbreak. A sick employee with no requirement to report symptoms and no manager on the floor to enforce one is a direct transmission path for Norovirus, which accounts for roughly 20 million U.S. cases of foodborne illness each year.
Inspectors also cited improper handwashing technique, meaning employees were attempting to wash their hands but doing it wrong, leaving pathogens behind. Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, and multi-use utensils had not been cleaned correctly either.
The shellfish records violation is particularly consequential. Kozy Korner serves shellfish, which are consumed raw or lightly cooked, and inspectors found inadequate identification and records for the shell stock on hand. Without those records, there is no way to trace where the shellfish came from if a customer gets sick.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled, a violation that carries a direct poisoning risk if a mislabeled chemical reaches a food surface or a container. The consumer advisory violation means customers ordering raw or undercooked items, including shellfish, were not warned of the risk. And staff demonstrated no allergen awareness, a gap that affects the roughly 32 million Americans living with food allergies.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no person in charge, no employee health policy, and no reporting of illness symptoms does not represent three separate problems. It represents one systemic failure: a kitchen where a sick employee can show up, handle food, and face no mechanism that would stop an outbreak before it starts.
The shellfish traceability gap adds a second layer of risk specific to this location. Oysters, clams, and mussels concentrate bacteria and viruses from the water they are harvested in. The records requirement exists so that if a customer falls ill after eating raw shellfish at Kozy Korner, investigators can identify the harvest location and pull product from other restaurants before more people are affected. Without those records, that chain breaks immediately.
The allergen awareness violation is not a paperwork problem. It means that on July 31, no staff member at this facility could reliably tell a customer with a peanut or shellfish allergy what was safe to order. Allergic reactions send 30,000 people to emergency rooms in the United States each year, and some are fatal.
The improper chemical storage finding sits alongside all of that. A cleaning chemical stored near food or mislabeled as a food product can cause acute poisoning within a single meal service.
The Longer Record
This was not a bad day at an otherwise clean restaurant. Kozy Korner has 26 inspections on record and 177 total violations documented across that history.
The July 31 inspection was the worst in recent years by high-severity count, but it did not come from nowhere. The prior visit in March 2026 produced four high-severity and three intermediate violations. The visit before that, in November 2025, produced three high-severity violations. The June 2025 inspection found six high-severity and three intermediate violations. The November 2024 inspection found seven high-severity and two intermediate violations.
The single worst inspection in the record was December 12, 2023, when inspectors documented 11 high-severity and four intermediate violations. A follow-up the next day, December 13, found two high-severity violations remaining.
The facility has never been emergency-closed in its recorded inspection history. It has accumulated high-severity violations in six of the eight most recent inspections on file.
Kozy Korner Grub and Pub was open for business when inspectors arrived on July 31. It remained open when they left.
