ST. PETERSBURG, FL. State inspectors ordered Hungry Howie's Pizza and Subs at 6570 Central Ave emergency-closed on July 16, 2026, after finding both roach and rodent activity inside the restaurant, records show. The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation issued an order requiring the location to vacate by July 17. The restaurant reopened at 9:25 a.m. following a successful follow-up inspection.
What Inspectors Found
Inspectors documented both live roach activity and rodent presence during the July 16 visit, the combination that triggered the emergency closure order.
The closure was triggered by a single, specific finding: simultaneous roach and rodent activity inside an operating food service facility. That combination is among the conditions Florida regulators treat as an immediate threat to public health, serious enough to pull a restaurant's license on the spot rather than issue a warning and schedule a return visit.
Roach and rodent activity in a food preparation environment is not a paperwork violation. Both pests move freely between sewage, trash, and surfaces where food is prepared and served, carrying pathogens directly onto the food customers eat.
The closure order gave the restaurant until July 17 to vacate. By 9:25 a.m. on that date, inspectors returned, found conditions had been addressed, and allowed the location to reopen.
What This Means
Cockroaches are documented carriers of Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria. They travel through drains, garbage, and grease traps, then cross food prep surfaces, equipment interiors, and stored ingredients without any visible sign they were there. A customer eating a pizza assembled on a surface a roach crossed overnight has no way of knowing it.
Rodents carry their own suite of pathogens, including Hantavirus and Salmonella, and they contaminate far more food than they consume. A single mouse can leave behind dozens of droppings in a single night across multiple areas of a kitchen.
The reason Florida regulators treat simultaneous pest activity as grounds for immediate closure, rather than a citation to be corrected at the next routine inspection, is that the risk to customers is present with every meal served until the problem is resolved. There is no safe level of roach or rodent activity inside a licensed food facility.
The speed of the closure and reopening, less than 24 hours, indicates the restaurant responded quickly. But the closure itself means that on July 16, customers who ordered from that location were eating food prepared in a kitchen where both pests had been documented by a state inspector.
The Longer Record
State records show zero prior inspections on file for this location before the July 16 closure. There are no prior violations on record and no prior emergency closures.
That absence of history cuts two ways. It means there is no documented pattern of neglect at this address, no string of warnings that went unheeded before regulators finally acted. But it also means there is no baseline record showing this location had ever been inspected and cleared before the day inspectors arrived and found roaches and rodents.
For a facility with no inspection history, the first entry in the state's public record is an emergency closure. That is an unusual way for a location's documented history to begin.
Whether the pest activity represented a sudden infestation or a longstanding condition that had simply never been inspected before is not something the available records can answer. What the records do show is that when inspectors visited on July 16, the conditions inside were serious enough to warrant shutting the restaurant down immediately.
After the Closure
The restaurant met state standards and was cleared to reopen within hours of the closure order deadline. Inspectors confirmed the high-priority violations had been addressed before issuing the all-clear at 9:25 a.m. on July 17.
What the record does not show is what remediation took place between the closure order and the follow-up inspection, how extensive the pest activity was when inspectors first arrived, or how long conditions had existed before July 16. Those details are not part of the public inspection record.
The location at 6570 Central Ave is now operating. Whether the follow-up inspection documented any remaining lower-priority violations from the July 16 visit is not reflected in the data available at the time of publication.
