CLERMONT, FL. State inspectors ordered Papa Johns Pizza 5364 on South Highway 27 shut down on July 15, 2026, after finding both roach and rodent activity inside the restaurant, records show.
The closure order required the location at 3310 S Hwy 27, Suite 4 to be vacated by July 16. State records indicate the restaurant reopened the same day, at 8:50 a.m., after meeting standards inspectors required.
What Inspectors Found
Both roach and rodent activity were documented inside the Clermont Papa Johns on July 15, a combination that triggers automatic emergency closure under Florida food safety rules.
The closure was triggered by a single, compounded finding: live pest activity from two separate sources inside a working food preparation environment. Inspectors documented both roach and rodent activity, which under Florida food safety rules constitutes an immediate threat to public health serious enough to pull a restaurant's operating status on the spot.
It was not a single stray insect or an isolated dropping. The record shows inspectors found evidence of an active infestation severe enough to warrant an emergency order, not a warning or a reinspection notice.
What This Means
Roaches and rodents are not simply a sanitation nuisance in a commercial kitchen. Both are classified as vectors for disease, meaning they carry and transmit pathogens directly to food, food-contact surfaces, and equipment.
Cockroaches carry bacteria including Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria on their bodies and legs. They move from drains, walls, and refuse to food prep surfaces without any visible barrier. A customer eating a pizza prepared on a surface a roach traveled across has no way of knowing the exposure occurred.
Rodents are a separate and compounding risk. Rodent droppings, urine, and hair can contaminate food and surfaces throughout a kitchen. Rodents also gnaw through packaging, creating secondary contamination points that are difficult to trace. When inspectors find rodent activity alongside roach activity in the same facility, they are documenting a kitchen where pest control has failed at multiple levels simultaneously.
Florida food safety rules treat this combination as an emergency rather than a routine citation because the contamination risk is immediate. A restaurant can receive a warning for a cracked floor tile or a missing hand-washing sign and continue operating while it fixes the problem. Active pest activity from two species does not work that way. The order to vacate came the same day inspectors documented the finding.
The Closure and Reopening
The July 15 closure order required the restaurant to be vacated by July 16. Records show the location reopened at 8:50 a.m. on July 16, indicating that inspectors returned, conducted a follow-up visit, and determined that the conditions prompting the emergency closure had been addressed.
That timeline, roughly one day between closure and reopening, is not unusual in Florida emergency closure cases. Operators who move quickly to bring in pest control professionals, deep-clean affected areas, and discard any contaminated food inventory can sometimes satisfy inspectors within 24 hours.
What the record does not show is the scope of the pest activity at the time of the July 15 inspection. The data does not include specific counts of roaches observed, the locations inside the kitchen where evidence was found, or the nature of the rodent activity documented. Those details would appear in the full inspection report.
The Longer Record
State records show zero prior inspections on file for Papa Johns Pizza 5364 at this location. There are no prior violations documented, and no prior emergency closures in the facility's history.
That absence of prior records makes the July 15 closure harder to place in context. A restaurant with 30 or 40 prior inspections and a recurring pest problem tells a clear story of documented failure over time. A location with no inspection history on record tells a different story, though not necessarily a reassuring one.
It is possible this location is relatively new, or that prior inspection records were not captured in the available data. It is also possible that prior inspections occurred and found no violations, meaning the pest activity documented on July 15 developed recently.
What the record does confirm is this: the first documented event in this facility's inspection history is an emergency closure. There is no baseline of clean inspections to point to, and no prior warnings about pest activity that went unaddressed. The closure on July 15 stands as the single data point available.
The restaurant's parent brand, Papa Johns, operates hundreds of franchise locations across Florida. Inspection records and compliance histories vary significantly from location to location, and a closure at one franchise unit does not reflect on others. Each location operates under its own license and is inspected independently.
The Clermont location on South Highway 27 was licensed for food service at the time of the closure, records show. It reopened July 16 after meeting state standards. Whether the pest activity that triggered the emergency was a sudden development or had been building undetected in the absence of recent inspections is a question the available record does not answer.
