BRANDON, FL. Back in June 2026, state inspectors ordered Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza on West Brandon Boulevard shut down for roach activity, forcing the restaurant to vacate by June 30 and halting service at a location that had already accumulated 208 violations across 29 inspections on record.
The closure was the second emergency shutdown in the facility's documented history.
What Inspectors Found
Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza, Brandon: Recent Inspection History
The June 29 inspection report cited roach activity as the condition that triggered the emergency closure order. The same inspection documented one intermediate violation: single-use items being improperly reused.
Single-use items, including gloves, cups, utensils and foil, are designed and tested for exactly one use. Reusing them creates a direct contamination pathway between food, surfaces and customers.
But it was the roaches that shut the doors.
What This Means
Roach activity in a food service environment is treated as an emergency by state inspectors for a specific reason. Cockroaches carry bacteria including Salmonella and E. coli on their bodies and legs, and they move freely between waste areas, drains, food surfaces and stored ingredients without any barrier.
A single live roach observed near food preparation or storage is enough to trigger a high-priority violation. An infestation severe enough to warrant an emergency closure order signals a problem that cannot be corrected mid-service with a cleaning rag.
The state's standard in these cases is unambiguous: the facility must stop serving customers until the pest issue is resolved and a follow-up inspector confirms the restaurant meets safety standards. Anthony's was ordered vacated by June 30, 2026.
The intermediate violation cited alongside the roach finding compounds the picture. Reusing single-use items, particularly gloves, means that contamination picked up from one surface, one food product or one part of the kitchen travels directly to the next thing an employee touches. In a location already dealing with roach activity, that cross-contamination risk is not theoretical.
The Longer Record
The June 2026 closure did not arrive without warning in the inspection record.
The December 1, 2025 inspection was the most severe recent visit before the closure, with eight high-severity violations and three intermediate violations cited in a single day. That was followed by a callback inspection on December 2 that still found two high-severity violations and one intermediate violation, meaning not all of the most serious problems had been corrected within 24 hours.
October 2025 brought four high-severity violations and three intermediate violations. The July 1, 2025 inspection found six high-severity violations and three intermediate violations. The July 9, 2025 follow-up still showed two high-severity violations and two intermediate violations.
Across 29 total inspections on record, the facility has accumulated 208 violations. That averages to more than seven violations per inspection visit across its documented history.
The June 29 closure was the second emergency shutdown the Brandon location has faced. The first is also part of the facility's permanent record.
The Pattern
What the inspection record shows is a location that has cycled through high-severity findings, follow-up inspections and partial corrections repeatedly over at least the past year.
The February 2, 2026 visit found two high-severity violations. The December 2025 cluster, three inspections in fifteen days, reflected a facility that required multiple callbacks to bring violations down to an acceptable level.
A pattern of high-severity violations in repeated inspections, followed by a second emergency closure for pest activity, is the kind of record that state inspectors document precisely so that the history is available.
Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza is a licensed permanent food service facility. The June 29 closure record shows the restaurant reopened at 10:15 a.m. following the shutdown order, after inspectors confirmed the facility had addressed the conditions that triggered the closure.
What the record does not show is how many of the 208 cumulative violations across 29 inspections fell into the same categories that drove the two emergency closures.
