NEWBERRY, FL. State inspectors walked into Brick & Copper @ 1906 on West Newberry Road on August 26 and found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a finding that means no one can trace where that food came from if a customer gets sick. They also found toxic substances improperly identified, stored, or used somewhere on the premises. Despite eight high-severity violations documented that day, the restaurant was not closed.
The August 26 inspection produced eight high-severity citations and three intermediate ones. That tally matches the count from the December 30, 2025 inspection almost exactly, and it follows inspections in October and July of 2025 that each cleared six and nine high-severity violations respectively.
What Inspectors Found
The food-sourcing citation stands as the inspection's most consequential finding. When a restaurant purchases from unapproved or unknown suppliers, that food has bypassed USDA and FDA safety inspections entirely. If a customer becomes ill, health investigators have no supply chain to trace.
The shell stock citation compounds that problem. Shellfish, including oysters, clams, and mussels, are frequently eaten raw or barely cooked, and without proper identification tags and harvest records, inspectors cannot determine where the shellfish originated or pull that source if an illness cluster emerges.
The allergen citation is its own category of risk. Thirty-two million Americans have food allergies, and allergic reactions send roughly 30,000 people to emergency rooms each year. Inspectors found no demonstrated allergen awareness among staff, meaning a customer with a shellfish or nut allergy had no reliable safety net at this restaurant on August 26.
The toxic substances citation, combined with improper sewage disposal, rounds out a picture of a facility where multiple foundational safety systems were not functioning on the same day.
What These Violations Mean
The pairing of no employee health policy and no illness reporting is not a paperwork problem. It is the documented mechanism behind the majority of multi-victim norovirus outbreaks in restaurants. A sick employee with no policy requiring them to report symptoms, and no culture of reporting built by that policy, continues prepping food. Norovirus spreads through surfaces, through food handled by contaminated hands, and through improperly cleaned cutting boards and prep equipment, which is exactly what the food-contact surface citation also flagged.
The improper sewage disposal citation introduces a separate contamination pathway. Raw sewage contains E. coli, Hepatitis A, and a range of pathogens that can reach food prep surfaces, food itself, and the hands of employees who do not realize the exposure has occurred.
Inadequate cooling equipment means that even if the food sourcing and illness questions were resolved, the facility lacked reliable equipment to keep cold food out of the bacterial growth zone, which sits between 41 and 135 degrees Fahrenheit. The absence of a consumer advisory for raw and undercooked items means that elderly diners, pregnant women, and anyone with a compromised immune system ate those foods without the warning the state requires.
The Longer Record
Brick & Copper @ 1906: Inspection Pattern, 2023-2026
Brick & Copper @ 1906 has accumulated 321 violations across 34 inspections on record. The facility has been emergency-closed four times, including twice for roach activity in a five-week stretch in late 2017, once more for roaches in early 2018, and once for combined roach and fly activity in May 2023.
The single clean inspection in this stretch, recorded on March 5, 2024, did not hold. By August of that same year the facility was back to five high-severity violations, and by July 2025 it reached nine.
Seven of the last eight inspections on record have produced five or more high-severity violations. The August 26 inspection was the fourth in twelve months to reach eight or more.
The restaurant was not closed after the August 26 inspection.
