DAYTONA BEACH SHORES, FL. State inspectors visiting Cherry Hill Ice Cream Cafe on Beachcomber Street on July 17 found food contaminated by chemical, physical, or biological hazards, a violation that inspectors classify as an adulteration hazard capable of causing acute poisoning or serious injury. The facility was not emergency-closed.
Six of the ten violations documented that day were high-severity. Four more were intermediate. The shop at 138 Beachcomber Street remained open to customers after the inspection concluded.
What Inspectors Found
The contaminated food violation and the toxic chemicals citation appeared together in the same inspection report. Inspectors documented that chemicals were improperly stored or labeled near the facility, a condition that creates a direct pathway for sanitizers, cleaners, or pesticides to reach food or food-preparation surfaces.
Inspectors also cited the cafe for failing to follow parasite destruction procedures. That violation applies when fish, pork, or wild game is served without the freezing or cooking protocols required to kill parasites including Anisakis and Trichinella. At a beachside cafe, fish items on the menu carry that risk if proper handling is not documented.
Food contact surfaces were cited as not properly cleaned or sanitized, a violation that state inspectors link to bacterial transfer between raw and ready-to-eat foods. Multi-use utensils, cited as an intermediate violation, compound that risk: improperly cleaned utensils develop bacterial biofilms within 24 hours that resist standard cleaning.
The facility also had no written employee health policy. That means no formal procedure exists to keep sick workers out of the kitchen.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of contaminated food and improperly stored toxic chemicals is among the most acute hazard pairings an inspector can document. Cleaners and sanitizers stored near food preparation areas can enter food directly through splash, mislabeling, or container proximity. The result is chemical poisoning, which unlike bacterial illness does not require hours of incubation. Symptoms can appear within minutes of ingestion.
The parasite destruction citation carries a different but equally serious risk. Parasites like Anisakis in fish and Trichinella in pork are not killed by refrigeration alone. They require either thorough cooking to specific internal temperatures or commercial-grade freezing held for defined periods. When those steps are skipped or undocumented, the parasites can survive into the food a customer eats.
The absence of an employee health policy at Cherry Hill Ice Cream Cafe means there is no written requirement for workers to report symptoms of Norovirus, Salmonella, or Hepatitis A before handling food. Norovirus alone accounts for an estimated 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and a single infected food handler is enough to trigger an outbreak. The policy violation does not mean a sick employee was present, but it means the cafe had no formal safeguard to prevent one from working.
Improperly used wiping cloths, cited as an intermediate violation, are a routine but consequential finding. A cloth used to wipe a contaminated surface and then used again on a prep area or food contact surface carries bacteria directly to the next point of contact. Combined with unsanitized food contact surfaces, the contamination pathways multiply.
The Longer Record
This was not the first difficult inspection at Cherry Hill Ice Cream Cafe. State records show nine inspections on file for the facility, with 48 total violations documented across those visits.
The July 2025 inspection, one year before this one, produced 7 high-severity violations and 1 intermediate. The October 2024 visit found 3 high-severity violations and 2 intermediate. The pattern of high-severity citations extends back to February 2022, when inspectors documented 5 high-severity violations and 2 intermediate on a single visit.
Three inspections in 2022, including two in April and one in August 2021, produced zero high-severity or intermediate violations. Those clean records make the subsequent escalation more notable, not less. The facility demonstrated it could pass inspection. Since July 2022, it has not passed cleanly.
The July 2026 inspection, with 6 high-severity violations, is the second-worst in the facility's recorded history by that count, behind only the 7 high-severity violations from July 2025. The cafe has never been emergency-closed.
Open for Business
State inspectors documented ten violations at Cherry Hill Ice Cream Cafe on July 17, 2026. Six were high-severity. The violations included food contaminated by chemical or biological hazards, improperly stored toxic chemicals, parasite destruction failures, and unsanitized food contact surfaces.
The facility remained open.
