FORT MYERS, FL. State inspectors walked into Mr. Tequila Mexican Restaurant at 4420 Colonial Blvd on April 22, 2026, and found food from unapproved or unknown sources being served to customers, one of six high-severity violations documented that day. The restaurant was not closed.
The facility remained open despite a violation record that included inadequate handwashing facilities, improper handwashing technique, no person in charge present or performing duties, misuse of time as a public health control, and inadequate shell stock identification records. A seventh violation, improper cleaning of multi-use utensils, was classified as intermediate.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation stands out. When a restaurant cannot identify where its food came from, there is no way to trace an illness outbreak back to a contaminated supplier. USDA and FDA inspections exist precisely to screen for pathogens like Listeria and Salmonella before food reaches a kitchen. Food that bypasses that system arrives with no safety record.
The shell stock violation compounds that problem. Shellfish, including oysters, clams, and mussels, are high-risk foods that are often consumed raw or only lightly cooked. State rules require restaurants to maintain identification tags on shellfish shipments so that any illness can be traced to a specific harvest lot. Without those records, a contaminated batch becomes nearly impossible to identify after the fact.
No manager was on duty or performing managerial duties during the inspection. According to CDC data, establishments without active managerial control accumulate high-priority violations at three times the rate of those with engaged management present. The remaining violations at Mr. Tequila on April 22 are consistent with that pattern.
The Handwashing Problem
Two of the six high-severity violations involved handwashing, and they are distinct failures. One cited the physical infrastructure: the handwashing facilities themselves were inadequate. The second cited technique: employees were not washing their hands and arms correctly.
These are not the same problem, and finding both at once is notable. A facility can have a working sink and still see employees cut corners on technique. Finding the sink itself inadequate means proper handwashing was structurally impossible for at least some portion of the day.
The utensil violation adds a third contamination pathway. Multi-use utensils that are not properly cleaned develop bacterial biofilms within 24 hours. Those biofilms are resistant to standard cleaning once established, meaning the problem compounds over time rather than resolving between services.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of unapproved food sources and inadequate shellfish traceability at Mr. Tequila creates a scenario where an outbreak could not be effectively investigated after the fact. Health authorities rely on supplier records and shellfish harvest tags to identify contaminated lots and issue recalls. Without those records, anyone sickened after eating there on or around April 22 would face a significantly harder path to identifying the source.
The time-as-public-health-control violation is less visible but equally serious. Some restaurants are permitted to hold food in the temperature danger zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, for a limited window of time rather than maintaining strict temperature control. That permission comes with strict documentation and disposal requirements. When those requirements are not followed, food that has been sitting in the danger zone for an unknown length of time remains in service, creating conditions for bacterial growth that temperature logs would otherwise catch.
The handwashing failures connect directly to the food sourcing and utensil violations. Pathogens from an uninspected food source can move from a cutting surface to a poorly cleaned utensil to a customer's plate, with no adequate handwashing at any point in that chain to interrupt the transfer.
The Longer Record
The April 2026 inspection was the fourth on record for Mr. Tequila. The facility has accumulated 31 total violations across those four inspections and has never been emergency-closed.
The pattern is not new. In September 2025, inspectors cited nine high-severity violations and two intermediate ones, the highest single-inspection count in the facility's record. In January 2025, they found three high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. The one clean inspection in the record came in July 2024, when inspectors documented zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations.
That July 2024 inspection now looks like an outlier. The facility returned to high violation counts by January 2025 and has not recovered. The April 2026 inspection, with six high-severity violations, is the second-worst in the facility's history, trailing only the September 2025 visit by three citations.
Three of the four inspections on record have produced high-severity violations. The categories have shifted from visit to visit, but the volume has not. Food sourcing, handwashing, and management presence are not one-time oversights. They are recurring failures at a restaurant that has never been ordered to close.
Mr. Tequila was still open after the April 22 inspection.