DAYTONA BEACH, FL. Food not cooked to the required minimum temperature was among seven high-severity violations documented at a Daytona Beach hotel restaurant on May 27, a finding that puts Salmonella survival in poultry squarely on the table.
State inspectors cited Best Western International Speedway on International Speedway Boulevard for the full list on that single visit: undercooked food, no allergen awareness demonstrated, toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled, an employee not reporting illness symptoms, improper handwashing technique, inadequate shellfish identification records, and no person in charge present or performing duties. Two intermediate violations, covering improperly cleaned multi-use utensils and the reuse of single-use items, accompanied the high-severity citations.
The facility was not emergency-closed.
What Inspectors Found
The undercooking violation stands as the most direct hazard to anyone who ate there that day. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit, and a plate that looks done is not the same as one that reached temperature.
Sitting alongside it on the same inspection report: toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled near food. That is not a paperwork problem. Mislabeled or misplaced chemicals near food preparation areas can cause acute poisoning with no warning to the customer consuming the food.
The allergen citation is its own category of danger. An employee who cannot demonstrate allergen awareness has no reliable way to answer a customer's question about whether a dish contains tree nuts, shellfish, or dairy. Food allergies send roughly 30,000 Americans to emergency rooms each year.
The shellfish traceability violation means that if a customer became ill after eating oysters, clams, or mussels at this location, investigators would have no reliable paper trail to identify the harvest source. Without those records, an outbreak investigation stalls at the restaurant door.
What These Violations Mean
The illness-reporting violation and the handwashing citation together describe a single contamination chain. An employee who does not report symptoms of illness continues handling food while contagious. If that same employee uses improper handwashing technique, pathogens remain on the hands even when a washing attempt is made. Norovirus, which spreads through exactly this route, requires fewer than 20 viral particles to cause infection in a new host.
The absence of a person in charge performing duties is the condition that allows the rest of these violations to exist at the same time. CDC data shows establishments without active managerial control have three times more critical violations than those with engaged supervision. When no one is watching, handwashing shortcuts go uncorrected, temperature checks get skipped, and chemicals end up in the wrong cabinet.
The utensil violations compound the picture. Multi-use utensils that are not properly cleaned develop bacterial biofilms within 24 hours, films that resist standard sanitizing. Single-use items reused across multiple food contacts carry whatever contamination they picked up the first time.
Seven of these nine violations were classified high-severity. All nine were documented on the same day at the same location.
The Longer Record
The May 27 inspection did not come out of nowhere. State records show 18 inspections on file for this location, with 98 total violations accumulated across that history.
The inspection the day after, on May 28, found three more high-severity violations and one intermediate. That means the facility logged ten high-severity violations across two consecutive days.
The pattern extends back further. In May 2025, inspectors visited twice within nine days. The May 13 visit produced five high-severity and four intermediate violations. The May 22 visit still found three high-severity violations. A February 2024 inspection found six high-severity and two intermediate violations, followed by a second visit that same month that found two more high-severity citations.
In June 2023, inspectors returned three days after an initial visit. The first inspection found three high-severity violations. The follow-up still found one high-severity and one intermediate.
The facility has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history on record.
The Pattern
What the records describe is not a single bad day. They describe a location that has cycled through high-severity violations across multiple years, in clusters that prompt return inspections, without ever triggering an emergency closure order.
The May 27 inspection found an employee not reporting illness symptoms, food not cooked to temperature, and toxic chemicals stored improperly, all at a hotel restaurant that serves guests who often have no other meal option on the property. Many of those guests are travelers with no knowledge of the inspection record before they sit down.
The facility remained open after inspectors left on May 27.