FORT MYERS, FL. State inspectors visited Golden Corral Buffet and Grill on Colonial Boulevard on June 19 and found that employees were not reporting illness symptoms, that the facility had no written employee health policy, and that sewage or wastewater was being improperly disposed of inside the restaurant. They cited eight high-severity violations and five intermediate ones. They did not close it.
The facility serves hundreds of customers at a time from an open buffet line. It remained in operation after the inspection.
What Inspectors Found
The three violations that cluster most tightly together are the most concerning. Inspectors found no written employee health policy, found that employees were not reporting illness symptoms, and found that no person in charge was present or performing supervisory duties. Those three conditions can exist independently. At this location on June 19, they existed simultaneously.
The shellfish traceability violation adds a separate layer of risk. State records show inspectors cited the restaurant for inadequate shell stock identification or records, meaning there was no reliable way to trace where the oysters, clams, or mussels on the buffet line came from.
The sewage and wastewater disposal violation was cited at the intermediate level, but it is not a minor paperwork issue. Improper disposal of waste water inside a food service facility creates a direct pathway for fecal contamination of food preparation surfaces.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and employees not reporting illness symptoms is, according to CDC outbreak data, the leading cause of multi-victim foodborne illness events in restaurant settings. Norovirus spreads through exactly this pathway: a sick worker handles food, no policy requires them to disclose symptoms, no manager is watching closely enough to notice, and customers who share a buffet line share the exposure.
Improper handwashing compounds that risk. Inspectors cited both inadequate handwashing facilities and improper technique, meaning the physical infrastructure to wash hands correctly was insufficient and the technique being used was wrong even when attempts were made.
The food contact surface violation means that surfaces touching ready-to-eat food were not being properly cleaned or sanitized between uses. At a buffet operation, those surfaces include serving utensils, trays, and prep areas that cycle through use continuously during service hours.
The time-as-public-health-control violation is specific to buffet operations. When food is held on a steam table or cold bar without temperature control, state rules allow it to remain there for a defined window of time before it must be discarded. The citation means that window was not being properly tracked or enforced, leaving food in the bacterial growth zone of 41 to 135 degrees for an undocumented period.
The Longer Record
The June 19 inspection was not this facility's worst moment on paper. That came in April 2022, when state inspectors found roach activity serious enough to order an emergency closure. The restaurant was shut down on April 5 of that year and allowed to reopen the following day.
The inspection history since then shows a facility that has never gone more than roughly a year without at least one high-severity violation. Records show 33 total inspections on file, with 159 total violations accumulated across those visits.
The March 2024 inspection produced four high-severity violations. The November 2023 inspection also produced four. The most recent inspection before June 19, conducted in March 2026, produced two high-severity violations. The jump to eight in a single visit represents the highest single-inspection high-severity count in the recent record.
The categories have shifted over the years, but the management-level failures documented on June 19, specifically the absence of an active person in charge and the absence of a functioning employee health policy, are the kind of systemic conditions that tend to produce other violations. They are not isolated mistakes. They are conditions.
The Longer Record in Context
A facility with 33 inspections on record has been examined by the state roughly four times per year on average. That level of scrutiny is not unusual for a high-volume buffet operation. What is notable is that eight high-severity violations in a single inspection, at a facility with a prior emergency closure and a consistent pattern of high-severity citations across multiple years, did not result in a second closure.
The restaurant was open when inspectors arrived on June 19. It was open when they left.