MELBOURNE, FL. A state inspector visiting Gourmet Cheese Steak & Pizza Co. Inc. at 775 S. Babcock Street on July 30 found food not cooked to the required minimum temperature, toxic chemicals improperly stored near food prep areas, and no written employee health policy in place — six high-severity violations in a single visit. The restaurant was not emergency-closed.
The inspection also turned up two intermediate violations, one for inadequate ventilation and lighting and one for improper waste disposal. Eight violations total. The facility remained open to customers after the visit.
What Inspectors Found
The undercooking citation is the most direct food safety threat in the July 30 report. When meat or poultry is not brought to the required minimum internal temperature, pathogens including Salmonella survive and reach the customer's plate.
Inspectors also documented toxic chemicals stored or labeled improperly in the facility. Chemicals kept near food preparation areas can contaminate food through direct contact, mislabeling, or spillage, and the consequences can be acute rather than delayed.
Food contact surfaces, including cutting boards and prep equipment, were cited as not properly cleaned or sanitized. Those surfaces are a direct transfer route for bacteria from one food item to the next, or from a contaminated surface to food that will not be cooked again before serving.
The inspector also noted that time was not being properly used as a public health control. When a facility opts to use time rather than temperature to keep food safe, it must track when food entered the temperature danger zone and discard it within a set window. Without that tracking, there is no way to know how long food has been sitting at temperatures where bacteria multiply rapidly.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of violations documented on July 30 represents nearly every major pathway by which a restaurant can make a customer sick. Undercooking is one of the most direct: Salmonella in poultry, for example, survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. A customer eating undercooked chicken at Gourmet Cheese Steak & Pizza Co. on or around July 30 had no way of knowing the risk.
The absence of an employee health policy compounds every other violation on the list. A written health policy is the mechanism that keeps sick workers out of the kitchen. Without one, an employee with Norovirus, Salmonella, or Hepatitis A has no formal instruction to stay home, and no documented understanding that they should. Norovirus alone accounts for roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and food workers are a primary transmission route.
Improper handwashing technique is a separate failure from simply not washing hands. An employee who goes through the motions of handwashing but does so incorrectly, skipping steps or cutting the time short, leaves pathogens on their hands. Those hands then touch food, surfaces, and equipment. Combined with food contact surfaces that are not properly sanitized, the contamination pathways at this facility on July 30 were numerous.
Improper waste disposal, cited as an intermediate violation, matters because accumulated waste attracts rodents, cockroaches, and flies. Each of those pests is a disease vector capable of contaminating food and surfaces throughout a kitchen.
The Longer Record
The July 30 inspection was not an outlier. It was the eighth consecutive inspection on record in which Gourmet Cheese Steak & Pizza Co. received at least three high-severity violations.
The facility has 29 inspections on record and 332 total violations documented. In July 2023, a single inspection produced eight high-severity violations and three intermediate ones. Five months later, in December 2023, inspectors returned and found three more high-severity violations and three intermediate ones. The pattern did not improve in 2024 or 2025.
The most recent inspection before July 30, conducted in February 2026, found four high-severity violations and one intermediate. The September 2025 visit produced five high-severity violations and two intermediate. The July 2025 inspection, exactly one year before the most recent visit, found six high-severity violations and two intermediate, the same counts as July 30.
The facility has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history.
Still Open
State inspectors have the authority to order an emergency closure when a facility presents an immediate threat to public health. Conditions that typically trigger closure include live pest activity, sewage backups, and loss of running water. Six high-severity violations, including undercooked food and improperly stored toxic chemicals, did not meet that threshold on July 30.
Gourmet Cheese Steak & Pizza Co. at 775 S. Babcock Street in Melbourne was open for business after the inspection.
