A Miami Subway racked up 29 violations in one visit. Inspectors wrote 'no further action.'

FLORIDA. On August 11, a state inspector walked into a Miami Subway and left with a report listing 29 violations. Chemical storage problems. Handwashing deficiencies. Issues with food contact surfaces, cooking temperatures, clean utensils, cooling equipment, and ventilation. The premises were cited as unclean. The inspector checked the box for “Inspection Completed — No Further Action” and moved on.

The restaurant stayed open.

Twenty-four of those 29 violations were classified as basic, the lowest tier in Florida’s three-level system. Two were high-priority. The math worked out to no emergency closure, no administrative complaint, no callback inspection. Just a report filed and a door left unlocked. The same location would later be counted among the three worst-performing Subway restaurants in Miami-Dade County. But on that August morning, the violation count and the closure decision were two entirely separate calculations.

That distinction sits at the center of what Florida’s 2025 inspection records actually show when you put McDonald's and Subway side by side across 818 and 816 locations, more than 2,700 combined inspections, and more than 8,000 total violations.

Subway logged 4,489 violations across 1,383 inspections in 2025, an average of 3.25 per inspection. McDonald's logged 3,691 across 1,361 inspections, an average of 2.71. The gap between them — 798 violations and 0.54 per inspection — is the headline number. Subway had six emergency closures to McDonald's’s four. Only 16.8 percent of Subway inspections came back completely clean, against 21.1 percent for McDonald's.

By every broad measure, Subway performed worse. Then you look at what kind of violations each chain is accumulating, and the picture changes shape.

Florida’s inspection system divides violations into three tiers. High-priority violations are the ones most directly linked to foodborne illness: improper temperatures, contaminated surfaces, pest activity, employee hygiene failures. Intermediate violations cover procedural and equipment issues. Basic violations are the structural and maintenance category.

McDonald's logged 752 high-priority violations across its 1,361 inspections — an average of 0.55 per inspection. Subway logged 682 high-priority violations across 1,383 inspections, an average of 0.49. Subway has more total violations. McDonald's has more of the serious ones.

The gap between the two chains in the intermediate tier is where Subway’s overall deficit is almost entirely built. Subway was cited for 1,116 intermediate violations. McDonald's was cited for 511 — more than double — across a nearly identical number of inspections.

Understanding why requires looking at which specific violations each chain accumulates most often. Those lists tell two different stories about two different kinds of institutional failure.

McDonald's’s single most commonly cited violation in 2025 was “food contact surfaces” — a high-priority code covering equipment that touches food and has not been properly cleaned or sanitized. It appeared in 390 of McDonald's’s 1,361 inspections, meaning inspectors found unsanitized food-contact surfaces in roughly 29 percent of all McDonald's visits statewide. That violation is a food handling and training failure. Surfaces that touch food are not being sanitized consistently.

Subway’s most commonly cited violation was “outer openings protected” — a basic code covering gaps in doors, windows, and screens that allow pests to enter. It appeared in 391 of Subway’s 1,383 inspections, also roughly 28 percent. That is the structural precondition for a pest infestation. All six of Subway’s emergency closures in 2025 were for pest activity. The chain’s most commonly cited violation is the one that creates the conditions for exactly those closures.

Subway also showed up in 184 inspections with a violation coded as “food in good condition” — covering food that was spoiled, moldy, or otherwise unfit. That code does not appear anywhere in McDonald's’s top 15 violation types.

No location in the dataset illustrates Subway’s pattern more completely than Subway Sandwiches in Broward County. The restaurant was inspected eight times in 2025 and had zero clean inspections across all eight visits.

The year began on January 2 with five violations, two of them high-priority, and an administrative complaint filed against the location. A callback inspection found two remaining violations on January 3. An extension was granted. Seven weeks later, on February 26, inspectors returned and found nine violations, three of them high-priority. The state issued an emergency closure order.

The emergency order was resolved the next day. A February 27 callback found three violations still present but not at the level that kept the doors shut. The location was allowed to reopen. On March 5, inspectors found nothing — zero violations. The only clean inspection the Lauderhill Subway would have all year, and it came immediately after an emergency closure. It did not hold.

By April 28, there were three violations again, two of them high-priority. Then October: five violations on the 20th — three high-priority — a warning issued. Four violations on the 21st callback, two high-priority, a second administrative complaint filed. Eight inspections. Thirty-one violations. Administrative complaints at the beginning of the year and at the end.

The Lauderhill closure was one of three Subway emergency orders issued in a ten-day stretch. On February 19, Subway in Clay County was emergency-closed for rodent activity. Six days later came Lauderhill. Two days after that, on February 28, Subway 2232 in Hernando County was emergency-closed for rodent and fly activity.

Three closures. Ten days. Three separate markets — Clay County south of Jacksonville, Broward County in South Florida, and Hernando County north of Tampa — with no geographic overlap and no shared ownership visible in the records. Three Subway franchises in three separate Florida markets, all failing on pest control within the same two-week window in February.

Subway’s other three emergency closures came later: Subway 21072 in Hillsborough County closed July 24 for roach activity. A Miami Location closed August 11 for fly activity. Subway #26241 in Duval County closed September 5 for rodent activity. Every one of Subway’s six closures in 2025 was pest-related.

McDonald's’s four emergency closures were geographically concentrated in a way Subway’s were not. All four were in South Florida. Mcdonald'S #17009 in Broward County closed June 2 for fly activity. Mcdonald'S #11843 closed August 18 for rodent activity. Mcdonald'S in Dade County closed September 10 for roach activity. Mcdonald'S #7151 closed October 28 for roach and fly activity.

The Riviera Beach location earned its place on two lists. It was emergency-closed in October and also appears among McDonald's’s worst individual locations statewide, with 23 violations across six inspections. Six inspections at a single McDonald's in one year is itself a sign of a location drawing sustained regulatory attention.

Palm Beach County produced one of the more counterintuitive findings in the dataset. McDonald's in Palm Beach County averaged just 1.94 violations per inspection across 65 inspections — the lowest average of any high-volume county for either chain. By that measure, Palm Beach McDonald's locations are among the best-performing in the state. That county also produced five McDonald's emergency closures in 2025, the highest closure count of any county for either chain. Low average violation rates and high closure counts, same county, same chain, same year.

Emergency Closures

McDonald's in Duval County — Jacksonville — averaged 5.24 violations per inspection across 80 inspections in 2025, the highest county average for McDonald's anywhere in the state by a significant margin. Subway in Duval was no cleaner, averaging 3.91 across 64 inspections with two emergency closures. But where Subway outperforms McDonald's in most large Florida counties, Jacksonville is a reversal: McDonald's’s county average is 1.33 violations higher per inspection than Subway’s.

The contrast with Escambia County — Pensacola, 360 miles west — is difficult to reconcile as the same chain in the same state in the same year. McDonald's in Escambia averaged 0.48 violations per inspection across 27 inspections. In Duval, McDonald's accumulated 419 total violations. Both are North Florida counties. Both contain mid-sized cities. The gap between them is eleven-fold.

Miami-Dade is where Subway’s statewide numbers get their worst readings. Subway had 207 inspections in Dade County in 2025, producing 856 violations at an average of 4.14 per inspection, with three emergency closures. Three of Subway’s five worst individual locations statewide are in Miami. McDonald's in the same county averaged 2.90 across 132 inspections — below the McDonald's statewide average.

The August 11 Miami Subway inspection illustrates exactly how Florida’s tiered violation system produces outcomes that can look counterintuitive. Twenty-nine violations, 24 of them basic, two high-priority — and the disposition was “No Further Action.” The Lauderhill Subway was closed with nine violations because three were high-priority and inspectors observed live pest activity. The threshold is driven by severity and imminent risk, not violation count.

Both chains follow the same seasonal pattern. McDonald's averaged 2.25 violations per inspection in May and 2.31 in June — its two best months. Subway averaged 2.45 in May and 2.47 in June. Both chains climbed through July and peaked in August. McDonald's’s July average was 3.10. Subway’s August average was 3.92 — the single worst monthly figure recorded by either chain across the entire year. Both chains also carry a secondary winter peak in January: McDonald's at 2.91, Subway at 3.59.

The year-over-year data tells the most consequential part of the story. McDonald's has been improving continuously for three straight years — from a 3.26 average in 2023 to 2.80 in 2024 to 2.71 in 2025. Emergency closures fell from roughly 18 in 2023 to 4 in 2025. Subway improved meaningfully in 2024, dropping from 3.59 to 3.22. In 2025, Subway’s average was essentially unchanged at 3.25. The gap between the two chains was 0.33 violations per inspection in 2023. In 2025 it is 0.54.

Whether McDonald's’s improvement reflects a corporate compliance initiative, franchisee retraining, or something else is not visible in the inspection records. What is visible is that McDonald's’s food contact surface problem — a training and supervision failure — is the kind of problem that can be addressed through behavioral change at scale. Subway’s outer-openings problem is structural. Resealing door frames and replacing screens across hundreds of franchise locations is a different kind of fix, slower and harder to verify from a corporate level.

Subway’s intermediate violation count — more than double McDonald's’s — points in the same direction. Ventilation systems, equipment condition, and procedural documentation don’t respond to a single training session. The 2025 records don’t say whether Subway is addressing those structural conditions. They say only that after a real improvement in 2024, the per-inspection average in 2025 didn’t move.

The Lauderhill Subway Sandwiches was still operating in October, still accumulating violations, still generating callbacks. The October 21 administrative complaint was pending when the 2025 inspection record closed out. Eight inspections. Thirty-one violations. One clean inspection in March that April immediately contradicted. Administrative complaints filed at both ends of the year.