FORT MYERS, FL. State inspectors cited Banh Mi and Tea on College Parkway for seven high-severity violations on July 24, including workers failing to report illness symptoms — a condition inspectors classify as one of the most direct pathways to a multi-victim outbreak. The restaurant at 8595 College Pkwy was not emergency-closed.
The inspection also documented no written employee health policy, inadequate handwashing by food employees, food contact surfaces that had not been properly cleaned or sanitized, toxic substances improperly stored or identified, no demonstrated allergen awareness, and inadequate shellfish identification records. An eighth violation, intermediate in severity, involved improper sewage or wastewater disposal.
Eight violations total. Seven of them high-severity. The restaurant remained open.
What Inspectors Found
The shellfish violation drew attention because it involves a food category that inspectors and public health officials treat with particular caution. Oysters, clams, and mussels are often eaten raw or lightly cooked, and without proper identification tags and harvest records, there is no way to trace a contaminated batch back to its source if customers get sick.
Inspectors also found that toxic substances were improperly identified, stored, or used. That category covers cleaning chemicals, sanitizers, and pesticides that, if stored near or above food preparation areas, can contaminate food directly. It is one of the violations that can cause immediate harm rather than gradual bacterial illness.
The allergen finding compounds the concern. The restaurant had no demonstrated allergen awareness, meaning staff could not confirm they understood which menu items contain common allergens such as shellfish, peanuts, or gluten. Food allergies affect 32 million Americans, and reactions to undisclosed allergens send roughly 30,000 people to emergency rooms each year.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and employees not reporting illness symptoms is what public health officials consider a foundational breakdown. A health policy tells workers when they must stay home and when they must disclose symptoms to a manager. Without it, a worker with Norovirus has no formal obligation to report anything, and Norovirus spreads through food contact with devastating efficiency.
Improper handwashing closes the loop on that risk. Hands carry pathogens from surfaces, from raw food, and from workers who are already sick. When handwashing is inadequate, every surface a worker touches becomes a potential transfer point, including the food contact surfaces inspectors separately cited as improperly cleaned and sanitized.
The sewage violation is in a different category but no less serious in what it signals. Improper wastewater disposal creates fecal contamination risk throughout a facility. The presence of that violation alongside the handwashing and illness-reporting failures means multiple contamination pathways were documented in a single visit.
Taken together, these are not isolated oversights. They describe a facility where the basic systems designed to keep sick workers away from food, keep surfaces clean, and keep dangerous substances separated from food preparation had broken down simultaneously.
The Longer Record
This was not Banh Mi and Tea's first difficult inspection. State records show the restaurant has been inspected five times since late 2024, accumulating 27 total violations across those visits. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
The July 2026 inspection was the second-worst by violation count in the facility's record. The worst came in August 2025, when inspectors cited eight high-severity violations and one intermediate, a nearly identical profile to the most recent visit. Two months later, in November 2025, inspectors returned and found two high-severity violations and two intermediate ones, suggesting some correction had occurred. By July 2026, the count was back to seven high-severity.
The facility's one clean inspection came in November 2024, when inspectors found zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. That record now sits at the bottom of a history that has twice reached eight or seven high-severity violations in a single visit.
The pattern that emerges across five inspections is one of correction followed by backsliding. Problems get addressed, the violation count drops, and then a subsequent inspection finds the same categories reappearing. Handwashing, food contact surfaces, and worker illness protocols are not complex systems to maintain. Their repeated appearance in the record at this location is what the inspection history documents.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed. After the July 24 inspection, with seven high-severity violations on the books, it remained open for business.
