KEY WEST, FL. A state inspector walked into Koffie House on Greene on September 8, 2026, and left with seven high-severity violations documented against the 602 Greene Street café. Not one was intermediate. Not one was minor. And the restaurant stayed open.
The inspection turned up food from unapproved or unknown sources, a failure to follow parasite destruction procedures, improperly stored or identified toxic substances, and no functioning employee health policy. The facility was not emergency-closed.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation is among the most serious on the list. Food from unapproved or unknown sources has not passed USDA or FDA safety inspections, which means if a customer gets sick, there is no supply chain to trace, no lot number to pull, no distributor to contact. Investigators are left with nothing.
The parasite destruction citation compounds that concern. When a facility serves fish or other proteins without following required freezing or cooking protocols, parasites including Anisakis and tapeworm can survive and reach the customer's plate.
Toxic substances improperly stored or identified is a different category of risk entirely. That violation does not involve bacterial growth or gradual contamination. It creates the possibility of immediate chemical exposure for customers or staff.
The employee health violations round out a picture of systemic failure. The café had no written health policy and at least one employee was documented as not reporting illness symptoms. Those two violations together describe a workplace where a sick employee had no formal obligation to stay home and no written policy telling them to.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and an employee not reporting illness symptoms is the documented pathway for Norovirus outbreaks. Norovirus spreads person-to-person through contaminated food and surfaces. A single infected food handler, working without restriction, can expose dozens of customers in a single shift.
Food contact surfaces that are not properly cleaned or sanitized extend that risk. Cutting boards, prep surfaces, and utensils that carry bacteria or viral particles from one food item to the next are a primary vehicle for cross-contamination. At Koffie House on Greene, that violation appeared alongside the illness-reporting failures, not separately.
The time-as-public-health-control violation is technical but serious. Some facilities are permitted to hold food in the temperature danger zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, for limited periods if they track the time carefully and discard the food before it becomes unsafe. When that system breaks down, food that should have been thrown out stays in service.
Taken together, the seven violations cited on September 8 describe a facility where food sourcing was unverified, parasite protocols were not followed, chemicals were improperly handled, sick workers had no policy requiring them to report symptoms, surfaces were not adequately sanitized, and time controls on potentially dangerous food were not properly managed. All seven were high-severity. None were paperwork errors.
The Longer Record
The September 2026 inspection was the ninth on record for Koffie House on Greene. The facility has accumulated 35 total violations across those nine visits, and it has never been emergency-closed.
The inspection history shows high-severity violations in every single visit except one, a clean inspection in January 2021. Since then, the café has been cited for high-severity violations in each of the seven subsequent inspections, including five high-severity violations in April 2022, three in May 2024, three in April 2025, and two each in August 2025 and June 2026.
The June 2026 inspection, just three months before the September visit, turned up two high-severity violations. Three months later, that number had more than tripled.
Koffie House on Greene: Inspection History
No inspection in the facility's recorded history produced zero high-severity violations except that first one in 2021. Every visit since has added to a total that now stands at 35.
The September 8 inspection, with seven high-severity violations and no intermediate citations, is the worst single inspection in the facility's recorded history. As of that date, Koffie House on Greene was still serving customers on Greene Street.
