FLORIDA. At the Subway at 830 E. Hathaway in Bronson, state inspectors documented six high-severity violations in a single inspection, including toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled, food in poor condition or mislabeled, and no person in charge present or performing duties. That last finding is not a paperwork problem. It is the condition inspectors say allows every other violation to take root.
The Bronson location tied two other Florida Subway stores for the worst inspection result in the chain's 90-day record from April 23 through July 21, 2026. Across 876 Florida locations, the pattern is uneven but pointed: most stores pass, and a concentrated group of locations is accumulating serious citations at a rate the chain's statewide average does not reflect.
The Violations
The Subway at 7965 SR 50 in Groveland matched the Bronson store's six high-severity violations. Inspectors there cited failure to follow parasite destruction procedures, meaning fish served at that location may not have been frozen or cooked to the temperatures required to kill parasites including tapeworm and Anisakis. The store also drew citations for food in poor condition and improperly stored toxic chemicals.
The Subway at 1325 San Marco Blvd., Suite 104 in Jacksonville also reached six high-severity violations, and its list included two that rarely appear together: inadequate shell stock identification records and no allergen awareness demonstrated. For a sandwich chain that does not typically serve shellfish as a primary menu item, a shellfish traceability failure raises questions about sourcing that the inspection record alone does not answer.
At Subway 21218 on SW 152nd Street in Miami, inspectors found the highest combined violation count of any location in this period: five high-severity and five intermediate, ten total. The citation list there included improper sewage or wastewater disposal, no written employee health policy, and no allergen awareness, alongside food cooked below required minimum temperatures and improperly identified toxic substances.
Subway 3956 at 1895 N. Highland Ave. in Clearwater drew a citation that stands apart from the rest of the locations in this review: no approved potable water supply. Inspectors also cited food not cooked to required minimum temperature and improperly stored toxic chemicals at the same visit. The combination of compromised water and undercooking in a single inspection is among the most acute findings in this data set.
Two Hialeah locations appeared in the worst-performing group. At Subway at 1905 W. 35th St., inspectors cited inadequate handwashing facilities alongside food in poor condition and improper use of time as a public health control, meaning food held without temperature controls may have been left in the danger zone without a documented time limit. At Subway #26296 at 4410 W. 16th Ave., the same handwashing infrastructure failure appeared alongside the shellfish traceability citation, an unusual finding for a second Hialeah Subway location in the same inspection window.
At Subway #31891 at 8110 Lem Turner Rd. in Jacksonville, inspectors cited improper hand and arm washing technique alongside toxic substances improperly stored and inadequate shell stock records, four high-severity violations in total.
Subway Store #52930 at 1570 John F. Kennedy Causeway in North Bay Village drew the smallest violation count of the locations flagged in this period, two high-severity citations, but one of them was no allergen awareness demonstrated. At a chain that serves customers with documented nut, dairy, and gluten sensitivities at a high-traffic causeway location, that citation carries specific weight.
What These Violations Mean
The most frequently cited high-severity violation across these ten Subway locations is no consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods, appearing at seven of the ten stores. On its own, the absence of a posted advisory is a paperwork failure. But it is not a trivial one. Customers with compromised immune systems, pregnant women, elderly diners, and young children rely on that disclosure to make informed choices about what they eat. When it is missing, the risk falls entirely on the customer.
The employee illness reporting violations documented at the Bronson, Groveland, Hialeah, and Hialeah locations are a different category of concern. Food workers who do not report symptoms are the primary transmission vector for norovirus, which causes 20 million U.S. illnesses annually. The Miami location on SW 152nd Street compounded this with a separate citation: no written employee health policy at all, meaning there is no documented framework requiring workers to report illness in the first place.
Improperly stored or labeled toxic chemicals appeared at the Bronson, Groveland, and Clearwater locations. Cleaning chemicals stored near food or food-contact surfaces can contaminate food directly through spillage or mislabeling. At the Clearwater location, that violation appeared in the same inspection as a citation for no approved potable water supply, meaning the water used to prepare food, rinse produce, and clean equipment may have come from a source that has not been verified as safe to consume.
The allergen awareness failures at the Jacksonville San Marco location, the Miami SW 152nd Street location, and the North Bay Village location represent a direct risk to the estimated 32 million Americans living with food allergies. Allergen reactions cause 30,000 emergency room visits and 150 deaths in the United States each year. Staff who cannot demonstrate allergen awareness cannot reliably prevent cross-contact between allergens and the food they serve.
The Longer Record
Subway's Florida footprint is substantial: 876 locations, 14,131 inspections on record, and a chain-wide pass rate of 93.26 percent. The average violation count per inspection across all Florida Subway stores is 3.43. Every location flagged in this 90-day review landed well above that average, and the three worst, Bronson, Groveland, and Jacksonville San Marco, more than doubled it.
The statewide inspection record also shows the chain has recorded one emergency closure in Florida this year. Emergency closures require an inspector to determine that conditions pose an immediate threat to public health, a threshold above the high-severity violation level. That a chain with 876 locations recorded even one closure in this period is notable context for the violation patterns appearing at its worst-performing stores.
The Hialeah locations are worth examining as a paired finding. Two stores in the same city, inspected in the same 90-day window, each drew citations for inadequate handwashing facilities and food in poor condition. The overlap suggests the problem at those locations is not random. It is structural.
The Pattern
Toxic chemical storage failures appeared at four of the ten worst-performing locations in this period: Bronson, Groveland, Clearwater, and Jacksonville San Marco. Food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized appeared at Bronson, Groveland, Clearwater, and Miami. Those two violations, chemicals near food and contaminated surfaces, are the combination that creates cross-contamination risk at the point of food preparation.
The Clearwater location's citation for no approved potable water supply remains the single most acute unresolved finding in this data set. Water that has not been verified as potable is used for everything in a food service operation: cooking, rinsing, sanitizing, and handwashing. The inspection record does not show whether that condition was corrected before the store's next service period.
