RIVERVIEW, FL. State inspectors walked into Hungry Howie's Pizza and Subs #177 on S US Highway 301 on July 17, 2026, and left with six high-severity violations documented, including improper storage or use of toxic substances and a complete failure to demonstrate allergen awareness among staff. The restaurant was not closed.
Not one of the six violations was low-level paperwork. Every citation on the July inspection report carried a high-severity designation, the same classification reserved for conditions that create direct risk of illness or injury to customers.
What Inspectors Found
The toxic substance violation is among the most immediate risks on the list. Chemicals used for cleaning and pest control, when improperly labeled, stored near food, or misapplied, can contaminate food directly without any visible sign that something is wrong.
The allergen finding is equally blunt. Inspectors determined that staff had not demonstrated allergen awareness, meaning employees handling ingredients could not reliably identify or communicate which menu items contain the eight major allergens. Food allergies affect 32 million Americans, and allergic reactions send roughly 30,000 people to emergency rooms each year.
Inspectors also cited the location for failing to follow parasite destruction procedures. That violation applies when fish, pork, or other parasite-risk proteins are served without the freezing or cooking protocols required to kill organisms like Anisakis or Trichinella. A related violation, no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods, means customers who are pregnant, elderly, or immunocompromised had no notice that any such risk existed.
The fifth high-severity citation involved shellfish traceability. Without proper shell stock identification tags and records, there is no way to trace oysters, clams, or mussels back to their harvest location if a customer becomes ill.
Handwashing technique rounded out the six. The distinction here matters: this was not a citation for skipping handwashing entirely. Inspectors documented that employees were washing their hands using an improper technique, a failure that leaves pathogens on the skin even when the motion is performed.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of an allergen failure and a toxic substance violation at the same location on the same inspection day represents two separate pathways to customer harm that have nothing to do with each other. One involves untrained staff who cannot flag a peanut or a shellfish ingredient. The other involves chemicals that can end up in food through cross-contamination or mislabeled containers.
Parasite destruction is not an abstract regulatory requirement. When a facility serves fish or other high-risk proteins and cannot demonstrate it followed required freezing or cooking protocols, customers may have consumed food containing live parasites. The absence of a consumer advisory at the same location means customers had no information to make an informed choice.
The handwashing technique violation is worth pausing on. Inspectors do not write this citation because an employee forgot to wash their hands. They write it because they observed an employee attempt to wash their hands and do it wrong. That is a training failure with a direct line to cross-contamination of every surface and food item those hands touched afterward.
Taken together, the July 17 inspection documented a facility where food safety knowledge among staff was absent at multiple levels simultaneously.
The Longer Record
Hungry Howie's #177: Inspection History, High-Severity Violations
Across 17 inspections on record, this Riverview location has accumulated 91 total violations. It has never been emergency-closed.
The January 2025 inspection produced the only clean result in the facility's history, zero high-severity citations, zero intermediate. Six months later, inspectors returned and found four high-severity violations. Thirteen months after that clean result, the July 2026 inspection produced six.
The location has logged at least four high-severity violations in seven of its nine most recent inspections. That is not a facility that had one bad month. That is a facility where serious violations have been the baseline condition across four years of documented inspections.
The restaurant on S US Highway 301 in Riverview remained open after the July 17, 2026, inspection.
