ORLANDO, FL. Back in February 2026, state inspectors ordered Cornerstone Pizza on E Michigan Street closed to the public after finding roach activity inside the restaurant, the third time in 14 months that the same location had been shut down on an emergency basis.
The closure order came on February 23, 2026. Inspectors gave the restaurant until February 24 to vacate. It reopened later that same day, at 4:25 p.m.
What Inspectors Found
Cornerstone Pizza: Emergency Closure History
The February closure was triggered by roach activity, the same violation that had forced the restaurant to close just two months earlier in December 2025. The inspectors who visited on February 23 documented three high-severity violations and four intermediate violations during that visit.
Those high-severity findings included inadequate handwashing by food employees, inadequate shell stock identification and records, and toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled. Intermediate violations included improper sewage or wastewater disposal and single-use items being improperly reused.
The follow-up inspection on February 24, conducted before the restaurant was permitted to reopen, still found three high-severity violations and three intermediate violations.
What These Violations Mean
Roach activity alone is enough under Florida law to warrant an emergency shutdown, and the reasoning is direct. Roaches move between drains, garbage, and food-contact surfaces without any barrier. They carry bacteria associated with salmonella, E. coli, and other pathogens, and a live roach observed during an inspection is treated as evidence of an active infestation, not an isolated incident.
The handwashing violation documented at the February 23 inspection compounds that risk. Improper handwashing is the most direct route for transferring contamination from a surface, or a pest-touched area, to food that a customer will eat. When inspectors flag it as a high-severity violation, they are documenting that the contamination pathway was open.
The toxic chemical storage violation carries a different but equally immediate risk. Chemicals stored near food, or stored without proper labeling, can cause acute poisoning if they contact food directly or are mistaken for a food-safe product. At a facility already cited for pest activity, chemicals used for pest control are especially likely to be present in food preparation areas.
The shellfish traceability violation is less intuitive but matters if someone gets sick. Without proper shell stock identification records, there is no way to trace oysters, clams, or mussels back to their harvest source after the fact. If a customer falls ill, investigators have no chain of custody to follow.
The Longer Record
The February 2026 closure did not emerge from nowhere. Cornerstone Pizza has accumulated 261 violations across 30 inspections on record, and this was its third emergency shutdown since December 2024.
The first closure, in December 2024, was for sewage backup inside the facility. The second, in December 2025, was for roach activity. The third, in February 2026, was for roach activity again, 68 days after the second. The pattern across those three closures is not a restaurant catching bad luck. It is a facility cycling through the same categories of failure.
The inspection record between closures tells the same story. The December 17, 2025, inspection that triggered the second emergency closure found five high-severity and three intermediate violations. The June 2025 inspection found four high-severity and three intermediate violations. The December 2024 inspection found two high-severity and two intermediate violations. The one stretch where the numbers dropped was August 2025, when inspectors found zero high-severity violations and one intermediate. That improvement did not hold.
The most recent inspection in the data, from May 4, 2026, found three high-severity violations and two intermediate violations. More than two months after the February closure, the facility was still generating high-severity findings at every visit.
The Pattern
Thirty inspections. Two hundred sixty-one violations. Three emergency closures in 14 months, two of them for the same cause.
What the record shows is not a restaurant that failed once and corrected course. It is a location that has passed follow-up inspections well enough to reopen, then returned to generating serious violations within weeks or months. The August 2025 inspection with zero high-severity findings was the exception across years of documented problems, not evidence of a turnaround.
The February 23 closure was ordered and lifted within 24 hours. But the May 2026 inspection, the most recent on record, found three high-severity violations still on the books at Cornerstone Pizza on E Michigan Street.