DELAND, FL. Back in April 2026, state inspectors walked into the Perkins Restaurant and Bakery at 1405 N. Woodland Blvd. and documented that the kitchen was serving food from an unapproved or unknown source, a violation that means there is no way to trace that food back through the supply chain if a customer gets sick.
That was one of seven high-severity violations cited on April 7. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The April 7 inspection produced ten violations in total: seven high-severity and three intermediate. The high-severity findings covered nearly every critical control point in a commercial kitchen, from the food entering the back door to the surfaces it touched on the way to the plate.
Inspectors cited employees for not reporting symptoms of illness, a violation that sits at the center of how foodborne outbreaks spread in restaurant settings. They also found inadequate handwashing facilities, meaning the infrastructure needed to stop that transmission simply was not in place.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled near food. Inspectors also cited inadequate shell stock identification records, meaning shellfish served at the restaurant could not be traced to a licensed, inspected supplier if a customer became ill.
On the intermediate tier, inspectors documented improper sewage or wastewater disposal, inadequate ventilation and lighting, and improper use of wiping cloths. A follow-up inspection the next day, April 8, still found two high-severity violations and one intermediate.
What These Violations Mean
Food from an unapproved source is not a paperwork problem. When food enters a restaurant outside the licensed supply chain, it has bypassed USDA and FDA inspection checkpoints designed to screen for Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli. If a customer gets sick, investigators have no chain of custody to follow.
The illness-reporting violation compounds that risk directly. Food workers who do not report symptoms are the leading cause of multi-victim outbreaks, particularly for norovirus, which can spread from a single infected employee to dozens of customers in a single shift. At this DeLand Perkins, inspectors found both the missing traceability and the missing illness-reporting system on the same day.
The absence of a person in charge actively performing duties ties the other violations together. CDC data cited in the inspection record indicates that establishments without active managerial control accumulate critical violations at three times the rate of those with engaged management. On April 7, that pattern was visible across the entire inspection report.
Improperly stored chemicals near food create a separate and acute risk. Mislabeled or misplaced cleaning agents have caused poisoning incidents in food service settings when they contaminate food or are mistaken for food-safe products. Combined with food contact surfaces that were not properly cleaned or sanitized, the April 7 findings described a kitchen where contamination could enter from multiple directions simultaneously.
The Longer Record
The April 2026 inspection was not an anomaly. The Woodland Boulevard Perkins has 36 inspections on record and 317 total violations documented across that history, and the pattern of high-severity findings stretches back years.
In August 2025, inspectors visited twice within two days. The first visit, on August 11, produced seven high-severity violations and three intermediate, a tally identical to the April 7, 2026 inspection. A follow-up on August 13 still found two high-severity violations. That sequence mirrors what happened in April 2026 almost exactly, with a seven-high inspection followed by a follow-up that still carried high-severity citations.
The March 2024 inspection found five high-severity violations. September 2024 required two visits, with four high-severity violations on the first and one on the follow-up. In August 2023, inspectors again documented seven high-severity violations in a single visit.
The facility has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history. Every one of those seven-high-violation inspections, including the two that match April 2026 precisely, ended with the restaurant remaining open.
Still Open
The day after the April 7 inspection, a follow-up visit found that the violation count had dropped but had not reached zero. Two high-severity violations and one intermediate remained on April 8.
Across eight inspections dating to August 2023, this location has been cited for seven high-severity violations on three separate occasions. It has accumulated 317 documented violations over 36 inspections on record.
After the April 7 visit, with food from an unknown source in the kitchen, chemicals improperly stored near food, employees not reporting illness, and no manager actively on duty, the restaurant stayed open and served customers through the dinner hour.