WESTON, FL. A state inspector walked into POC Buffet & Grill on Bonaventure Boulevard on August 6 and found food sourced from suppliers that have never been vetted by federal safety regulators, a violation that means customers eating there that day had no guarantee the ingredients on the buffet line had ever been inspected for Listeria, Salmonella, or any other pathogen.
That was one of six high-severity violations documented at the Weston restaurant in a single visit. The facility was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The unapproved food source violation is serious on its own. Paired with inadequate shell stock records, it compounds the risk considerably. Shellfish, including oysters, clams, and mussels, are among the highest-risk foods served in any restaurant because they are frequently eaten raw or lightly cooked. Without proper tagging and sourcing records, there is no way to trace a contaminated batch back to its origin if customers become sick.
The inspector also cited employees for not reporting illness symptoms. That violation sits alongside a separate citation for improper handwashing technique, meaning workers were going through the motions of washing their hands without actually eliminating the pathogens on them.
Food contact surfaces were found improperly cleaned and sanitized. Cutting boards, prep tables, and similar surfaces that touch food directly are a primary route for bacterial transfer from one food to another, and from raw to ready-to-eat items.
The seventh violation, classified as intermediate, involved improper sewage or wastewater disposal. Raw sewage carries fecal bacteria throughout a facility and can contaminate food preparation areas in ways that are not immediately visible.
What These Violations Mean
The illness-reporting violation is the one public health officials point to most often when tracing outbreak origins. When a food worker comes in sick and does not disclose symptoms, they handle food, touch surfaces, and interact with equipment across an entire shift. Norovirus, one of the most common causes of foodborne illness outbreaks, spreads through exactly this route. A single sick employee at a buffet, where food sits in open trays and serving utensils are shared, can expose dozens of customers in a single service.
The handwashing technique violation makes that risk worse. An employee who attempts to wash their hands but does so incorrectly, skipping steps or not scrubbing long enough, leaves pathogens in place. The citation at POC Buffet means the inspector observed this failure directly, not as an absence of a sink or soap, but as a failure of the act itself.
The unapproved food source violation removes a layer of protection that most diners assume exists. USDA and FDA inspections of suppliers are the mechanism that catches contaminated product before it reaches a kitchen. Food that bypasses that system carries no such assurance. At a buffet operation, where volume is high and sourcing decisions affect every item on the line, the downstream risk to customers is broad.
The shellfish traceability failure compounds the sourcing problem. If a customer becomes ill after eating oysters or clams at POC Buffet, investigators would have no reliable documentation to identify where those shellfish came from, which harvest area, which distributor, which lot. That gap can prevent a recall from happening in time to protect other consumers.
The Longer Record
August 6 was not a bad day in an otherwise clean history. State records show POC Buffet & Grill has been inspected 44 times and has accumulated 313 violations across those visits.
The pattern in recent years is consistent. The January 2026 inspection produced five high-severity violations. The July 2025 inspection produced six high-severity violations and two intermediate ones, nearly identical to August's findings. March 2025 brought four high-severity violations. October 2024 brought three high-severity violations and two intermediate ones.
The restaurant has been emergency-closed three times. Inspectors ordered it shut in October 2020 for roach activity, and again in July 2020 for the same reason. Before that, a March 2017 closure was triggered by rodent activity. All three times, the restaurant was allowed to reopen within a day.
The violation categories shift somewhat from visit to visit, but the severity level does not. High-severity citations have appeared in six of the eight most recent inspections on record. The two inspections that showed zero high-severity violations, in August 2025 and February 2025, came immediately before or after visits that produced some of the worst tallies in recent memory.
Open for Business
After an inspector documented six high-severity violations at POC Buffet & Grill on August 6, including food from unapproved sources, employees not reporting illness, and no traceability records for shellfish, the restaurant was not ordered closed.
It remained open.
State rules allow inspectors to weigh whether conditions require an emergency closure or whether a follow-up inspection is sufficient. In this case, with 313 violations across 44 inspections and three prior emergency closures in its record, the facility that served customers dinner that evening was the same one an inspector had just cited for not being able to account for where its food came from.
