FLORIDA. The Chick-fil-A at 326 SE 1st Ave in Florida City drew seven high-severity violations during the July-through-September inspection window, the worst single-location tally among all 216 Chick-fil-A restaurants operating in the state. Inspectors cited the location for having no employee health policy, for an employee failing to report illness symptoms, for improper handwashing technique, for food in poor condition, for missing shellfish traceability records, for no consumer advisory on raw or undercooked foods, and for the absence of a person in charge performing supervisory duties. A citation for improper sewage or wastewater disposal rounded out the findings.
That is nine violations at a single location in a single inspection period, seven of them at the highest severity level the state assigns.
The Violations Across the State
The Chick-fil-A at 14020 Lunar Dr in Jacksonville recorded five high-severity violations, including improperly stored or labeled toxic chemicals, no allergen awareness demonstrated by staff, inadequate food contact surface sanitation, missing shellfish traceability records, and no consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods.
The Chick-fil-A #01918 at 3166 Daniels Rd in Winter Garden was cited for four high-severity violations, among them an employee failing to report illness symptoms, failure to follow parasite destruction procedures, improperly stored toxic chemicals, and no consumer advisory. Two intermediate violations, covering improper sewage disposal and inadequate ventilation, accompanied those findings.
The Chick-fil-A at 7333 W Sand Lake Rd in Orlando drew four high-severity citations as well, including missing shellfish traceability records, parasite destruction failures, improperly identified or stored toxic substances, and no consumer advisory.
The Chick-fil-A Sanford FSR #03800 at 4590 W State Road 46 accumulated the most total violations of any location outside Florida City, with four high-severity and three intermediate citations. Inspectors flagged improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, two separate toxic chemical violations, no allergen awareness, improper sewage disposal, unclean multi-use utensils, and inadequate ventilation.
The Chick-fil-A Mandarin at 3280 Oak Bluff Ln in Jacksonville had no person in charge present or performing duties, an employee not reporting illness symptoms, improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, and no consumer advisory, with an additional intermediate citation for unclean multi-use utensils.
The Chick-fil-A City Gate at 3820 City Gate Dr in Naples was cited for food from an unapproved or unknown source, no written employee health policy, and improperly cleaned food contact surfaces.
The Chick-fil-A of Ocoee #768 at 10620 W Colonial Dr drew violations for an employee not reporting illness symptoms, improperly stored toxic chemicals, no consumer advisory, and the reuse of single-use items.
The Chick-fil-A at 6875 S Florida Ave in Lakeland was cited for no person in charge on duty, an employee not reporting illness symptoms, and no consumer advisory, along with an intermediate ventilation violation.
The Chick-fil-A at 16310 US Hwy 441 in Alachua drew citations for food from an unapproved or unknown source, improperly stored toxic chemicals, no consumer advisory, and improper sewage disposal.
The Pattern Across 216 Locations
Across all 216 Florida locations, Chick-fil-A posted a 95.83 percent pass rate over the inspection period, with an average of 3.43 violations per inspection across 4,057 inspections on record. No Florida location was emergency-closed during 2026.
The chain's overall numbers are strong by any measure. But the ten worst-performing locations tell a different story, one in which the same categories of violations appear repeatedly and independently across the state.
The consumer advisory violation, which flags the absence of required disclosures about raw or undercooked foods, appeared at seven of the ten locations: Florida City, Jacksonville Lunar Drive, Winter Garden, Orlando Sand Lake, Mandarin, Ocoee, Lakeland, and Alachua. Toxic chemical storage failures appeared at five locations: Jacksonville Lunar Drive, Winter Garden, Sanford, Ocoee, and Alachua. Illness-reporting failures appeared at Florida City, Winter Garden, Mandarin, Ocoee, and Lakeland.
These are not isolated incidents. They are the same categories surfacing at locations spread from Alachua in North Central Florida to Florida City at the edge of the Everglades.
What These Violations Mean
The consumer advisory violation is the most common high-severity citation across these ten locations, and it is easy to underestimate. When a restaurant serves raw or undercooked proteins and fails to disclose that on the menu, customers with compromised immune systems, elderly diners, pregnant women, and young children cannot make an informed decision about their risk. That gap matters most for the populations who would be hit hardest by a resulting illness.
The illness-reporting failures at Florida City, Winter Garden, Mandarin, Ocoee, and Lakeland represent a more direct threat. Food workers who do not report symptoms are the primary driver of multi-victim outbreaks. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, spreads with particular efficiency in kitchen environments where one sick employee can contaminate surfaces, utensils, and food before anyone realizes there is a problem. The Florida City location compounded this by also lacking a written employee health policy, meaning there was no formal system requiring workers to report in the first place.
The toxic chemical citations at five locations are a separate category of risk. Improperly labeled or stored cleaning chemicals near food preparation areas can contaminate food directly, and mislabeled containers create acute poisoning risk if a worker mistakes a chemical for a food-safe product. The Sanford location drew two distinct toxic substance violations in the same inspection, one for improper storage and labeling and one for improper identification and use.
Food from unapproved or unknown sources, cited at Naples City Gate and Alachua, is a traceability problem. When food enters a facility outside the regulated supply chain, there is no inspection record, no recall mechanism, and no way to trace an illness back to its source if customers get sick.
The Longer Record
The statewide inspection record for Chick-fil-A in Florida runs to 4,057 inspections across 216 locations, an average of roughly 18.8 inspections per location. That history gives context to this quarter's findings.
The Florida City location's seven high-severity violations in a single inspection period is the sharpest finding in the data. The combination of no person in charge, no illness policy, an employee not reporting symptoms, improper handwashing technique, food in poor condition, missing shellfish records, no consumer advisory, and improper sewage disposal represents a near-complete breakdown of basic food safety management at a single site.
The Sanford location's seven total violations, four high-severity and three intermediate, make it the second-most cited location by total count. Two separate toxic chemical violations in one inspection, combined with unclean food contact surfaces, unclean multi-use utensils, improper sewage disposal, and inadequate ventilation, suggest systemic maintenance and training gaps rather than a single overlooked item.
The two Jacksonville locations, Lunar Drive and Mandarin, each appear in the top six worst performers independently. Both drew food contact surface sanitation violations. Mandarin also had no person in charge present, and Lunar Drive had toxic chemicals improperly stored. Two locations in the same metro area, under what is presumably the same regional oversight structure, recording overlapping high-severity violations in the same quarter is a fact the inspection record makes plain.
No Florida Chick-fil-A was emergency-closed in 2026. The Florida City location, which recorded the chain's highest single-location violation count this quarter, remained open throughout the inspection period.
