FLORIDA. A Popeyes on South University Boulevard in Jacksonville drew nine high-severity violations in a single inspection this summer, including citations for food not cooked to required minimum temperatures, employees not reporting illness symptoms, and no person in charge present or performing duties, according to state records reviewed for the period from June 2 through August 30, 2026.
That location, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen 2350 at 4108 S University Blvd, also had no written employee health policy and no consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods. Inspectors additionally cited food in poor condition and food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized, bringing its total to nine high-severity and three intermediate violations.
It was not the only Jacksonville location drawing serious scrutiny.
What Inspectors Found
Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen 2519 at 1324 Dunn Ave in Jacksonville was cited for seven high-severity violations, including food not cooked to required minimum temperature, improper sewage or wastewater disposal, and toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled. Inspectors also noted that employees were not reporting symptoms of illness and that no person in charge was present or performing duties.
Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen 13133 at 45 Duval Station Rd in Jacksonville matched that count with seven high-severity violations of its own, including a citation that stands out even against the rest of this list: food from an unapproved or unknown source. Inspectors also cited a failure to follow parasite destruction procedures, improper chemical storage, and employees not reporting illness symptoms.
The three Jacksonville locations together account for 23 of the 10 worst-performing facilities' combined high-severity violations during the 90-day window.
Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen #123 at 230 W Mitchell Hammock Rd in Oviedo drew six high-severity citations, including violations for improper handwashing technique, failure to follow parasite destruction procedures, and no consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods. Toxic chemicals were improperly stored or labeled there as well.
Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen 4901 at 5950 Park Boulevard North in Pinellas Park was cited for four high-severity violations, including no allergen awareness demonstrated and inadequate shell stock identification records, a citation that raises traceability questions for a chain not typically associated with shellfish service.
Three Popeyes locations operating under the "Tice" franchise group also appeared among the worst performers. The St. Petersburg location at 600 34th St N drew three high-severity violations, all chemical-related: food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized, toxic chemicals improperly stored, and toxic substances improperly identified, stored, or used.
The Spring Hill Tice location at 4493 Commercial Way was cited for food not cooked to required minimum temperature, improperly stored chemicals, and an intermediate violation for improper sewage or wastewater disposal.
The New Smyrna Beach Tice location at 3191 Hwy 44 was cited for an employee not reporting symptoms of illness, food in poor condition or adulterated, no consumer advisory, and intermediate violations for both improper sewage disposal and inadequate ventilation.
Statewide, Popeyes logged a 79.27 percent pass rate across 193 Florida locations, meaning roughly one in five inspections resulted in a failing outcome. The chain's average of 4.36 violations per inspection and three emergency closures this year place it among the chains whose Florida footprint warrants sustained scrutiny.
What These Violations Mean
The most frequently cited violation across these locations, food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized, appeared at five of the ten worst-performing facilities, including the Jacksonville Dunn Ave location, the Duval Station Road location, the St. Petersburg location, the Pinellas Park location, and the Oviedo location. Improperly cleaned surfaces are a primary transfer route for bacteria: a contaminated prep surface can introduce pathogens to every item prepared on it for an entire shift.
The citations for food not cooked to required minimum temperature, documented at the S. University Blvd Jacksonville location, the Dunn Ave Jacksonville location, and the Spring Hill location, carry specific risk for a fried chicken chain. Salmonella survives in poultry below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. A piece of chicken that reads 155 degrees and is served anyway is not a paperwork violation. It is a direct exposure risk.
Two locations, Duval Station Rd in Jacksonville and Oviedo, were cited for failure to follow parasite destruction procedures. That violation requires that certain fish, pork, and wild game products be frozen to specific temperatures for specified time periods before service. When those procedures are skipped, parasites including Anisakis and Trichinella can survive to the plate.
The citations at the S. University Blvd Jacksonville location for no employee health policy and employees not reporting illness symptoms are particularly serious in combination. Without a written policy, workers have no formal guidance on when to stay home. Without reporting, a worker who is actively sick can handle food, equipment, and surfaces for an entire shift. Norovirus, the leading cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States, spreads through exactly this pathway. The Dunn Ave Jacksonville location and the Duval Station Rd Jacksonville location were also cited for employees not reporting illness symptoms.
The Longer Record
The statewide picture provides context that individual inspections cannot. Across 193 Florida locations, state inspectors have conducted 4,518 inspections on record, a volume that reflects years of accumulated scrutiny. That history means the chain's current performance is not measured against a blank slate.
The three Jacksonville locations that dominated the worst-performers list this period are part of a city where the chain has multiple long-established outlets. The S. University Blvd location's combination of management failure, illness reporting failures, and undercooked food in a single inspection suggests not an isolated bad day but a systemic gap in oversight. When no person in charge is present and no employee health policy exists, every other violation on that list becomes easier to understand.
The Tice-operated franchise group, which appeared three times in the worst-performers list spanning St. Petersburg, Spring Hill, and New Smyrna Beach, showed a consistent pattern across all three locations: chemical storage violations appeared at all three, and sewage or wastewater disposal violations appeared at two of the three. A violation pattern that repeats across geographically separate locations under the same operator is a different kind of finding than a single location having a bad inspection.
Three emergency closures across the chain's Florida footprint this year represent a small fraction of 193 locations, but each closure requires an inspector to determine that remaining open posed an immediate threat to public health. The records do not specify which three locations were closed, but the chain's 20.73 percent failure rate means that nearly one in five Popeyes inspections in Florida this year ended without a passing score.
The Duval Station Rd Jacksonville location's citation for food from an unapproved or unknown source remains the single most unresolved finding in this data set. When food enters a commercial kitchen without going through USDA or FDA-inspected supply chains, there is no traceability if someone gets sick, and no mechanism to identify the source or scope of an outbreak.
