JACKSONVILLE, FL. An employee at a San Marco Boulevard juice bar was not reporting illness symptoms to management on July 13, according to state inspection records, a violation federal health officials identify as the leading cause of multi-victim foodborne outbreaks. Inspectors left FLA Juice & Bowl at 1563 San Marco Blvd open.
The July 13 inspection documented six high-severity violations and five intermediate violations at the facility. No emergency closure order was issued.
What Inspectors Found
Beyond the illness-reporting failure, inspectors cited toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled inside the facility. Chemicals stored near food preparation areas create a direct contamination risk; mislabeled containers have caused acute poisoning events when workers mistake a chemical for a food product or cleaning agent.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. The inspector also found that the facility was not correctly using time as a public health control, a procedure that allows food to stay in the temperature danger zone only if strict tracking is followed. It was not being followed.
The facility had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods, leaving customers with no way to assess their own risk. The person in charge was either not present or not performing supervisory duties at the time of the inspection.
On the intermediate level, inspectors documented improper sewage or wastewater disposal, multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, improper sanitizing solution or procedures, single-use items being reused, and inadequate ventilation and lighting.
What These Violations Mean
The illness-reporting failure is the violation with the most immediate potential to harm multiple customers at once. When a food worker is symptomatic with norovirus or another pathogen and continues handling food without reporting it, every item they touch becomes a potential transmission vehicle. Norovirus spreads with a dose as small as 18 particles. A single sick employee at a juice and bowl counter, handling fresh produce and ready-to-eat ingredients, can infect dozens of customers before anyone knows what happened.
The food contact surface violation compounds that risk directly. Surfaces that are not properly cleaned and sanitized carry bacteria from one food item to the next. At a facility serving raw produce, blended drinks, and bowls with fresh toppings, cross-contamination moves quickly and invisibly.
The time-as-public-health-control violation is specific and serious. When a facility opts to use time instead of temperature to keep food safe, state rules require strict documentation of when food entered the danger zone and when it must be discarded. Without that documentation, there is no way to know how long a food item has been sitting at a temperature that allows bacterial growth.
The improper sewage disposal citation at FLA Juice & Bowl is not a paperwork issue. Raw sewage contains fecal bacteria including E. coli and salmonella. Improper disposal routes that contamination back into the facility, potentially reaching surfaces, equipment, and food.
The Longer Record
FLA Juice & Bowl: Inspection History
The July 13 inspection was not an outlier. State records show FLA Juice & Bowl has accumulated 160 total violations across 15 inspections on record. Every substantive inspection in the dataset going back to October 2023 produced at least six high-severity violations.
The facility's worst single inspection came in October 2023, when inspectors documented 10 high-severity and 4 intermediate violations. The numbers dropped slightly in subsequent visits but never approached a clean record. December 2025 produced 8 high-severity violations, the second-highest total in the facility's recorded history.
FLA Juice & Bowl has never been emergency-closed in 15 inspections despite accumulating violations in serious categories repeatedly. A follow-up inspection on July 14, the day after the July 13 visit, showed zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations, a result that appears in the record without explanation.
The facility was open for business on July 13, with six high-severity violations documented inside, including an employee not reporting illness symptoms.
