PERRY, FL. Back in April 2026, state inspectors walked into Fusion Buffet at 2385 S Byron Butler Pkwy and found enough roach activity to order the restaurant shut down the same day.
The closure was ordered April 7. The facility was given until April 8 to vacate. It was the second emergency closure in the buffet's documented inspection history, and it came at the end of a year that had already shown serious warning signs.
What Inspectors Found
Fusion Buffet: Recent Inspection History
The April 7 inspection produced five high-severity violations and five intermediate violations, the most serious combination the facility had generated in at least two years. Roach activity was the specific finding that triggered the emergency order.
Inspectors returned on April 8, the deadline day. That visit still found one high-severity violation and one intermediate violation. A second follow-up the same day found one high-severity violation remaining. The restaurant was cleared to reopen at 5:20 p.m. on April 8.
By April 13, a final follow-up inspection recorded zero high-severity violations and zero intermediate violations.
What This Means
Roach activity in a food service facility is one of the violations Florida regulators treat as grounds for immediate closure, and for direct reasons. Cockroaches move between waste, drains, and food contact surfaces. They carry pathogens including salmonella and E. coli on their bodies and deposit them wherever they travel, which in a buffet setting means serving trays, utensils, and food containers that customers use directly.
A buffet environment makes that risk sharper than in a standard restaurant. Food sits in open containers at serving temperature for extended periods. There is no barrier between the serving line and a roach that has traveled from a drain or a storage area. Customers serve themselves, touching the same ladles and tongs repeatedly.
The five high-severity violations documented on April 7 were not all roach-related, but roach activity alone was sufficient for the state to order the building cleared. Under Florida law, that finding does not require a warning or a compliance window. It requires immediate closure.
The Pattern Before the Closure
The April 2026 shutdown did not arrive without context. Fusion Buffet's inspection record going back through 2024 shows a facility that consistently produced high-severity violations at every routine visit.
In September 2025, inspectors cited five high-severity violations and one intermediate violation, a tally that matched the closure-triggering inspection seven months later. In April 2025, the count was three high-severity and three intermediate violations. In October 2024, two high-severity and two intermediate violations. In May 2024, one high-severity and two intermediate violations.
Every documented inspection in that two-year stretch found at least one high-severity violation. Not a single routine visit came back clean.
The Longer Record
Fusion Buffet has 23 inspections on record with the state and 142 total violations across that history. That volume, spread across a permanent food service facility in a small North Florida county seat, reflects a facility that has drawn repeated regulatory attention over time.
The April 2026 closure was the second emergency shutdown in the restaurant's record. The existence of a prior closure matters because it means inspectors and the operator had already been through the emergency closure process once before. The steps required to reopen, the documentation of what triggered the order, the follow-up inspection schedule, none of that was new to this facility.
Despite that history, the April 7 inspection found five high-severity violations, the same severity level that had appeared in the September 2025 visit. The category of violation that forced the closure, roach activity, is not a paperwork deficiency or a temperature reading that drifted a few degrees. It is a pest infestation in a facility that serves food to the public on an open buffet line.
The restaurant passed its April 13 follow-up with no high-severity or intermediate violations on record. Whether the conditions that produced 142 violations across 23 inspections have been durably addressed is a question the next routine inspection will answer.