DELAND, FL. A state inspector walked into Porkie's of DeLand BBQ at 900 N. Woodland Blvd. on September 24 and found food not cooked to required minimum temperatures, toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled near food, and no written employee health policy in place. The restaurant was not closed.
Seven of the eight violations documented that day were classified as high-severity. The facility remained open and serving customers.
What Inspectors Found
The undercooked food violation is the most direct threat to anyone who ate at the restaurant that day. At a BBQ restaurant, poultry is a staple, and Salmonella in chicken survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Customers who ordered chicken or other items requiring minimum internal temperatures had no way of knowing the kitchen was not meeting that standard.
The chemical storage violation compounds the picture. Toxic substances improperly stored or labeled near food create a contamination risk that has nothing to do with how hungry someone is or how careful they are ordering. A mislabeled or misplaced chemical can enter food without anyone in the kitchen noticing.
The inspector also found that food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Cutting boards, prep surfaces, and utensils that carry bacteria from one food item to the next are among the most documented vehicles for cross-contamination in commercial kitchens.
No person in charge was present or performing duties at the time of the inspection.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of undercooked food and no consumer advisory is particularly significant at a barbecue restaurant. State code requires that menus or table notices warn customers when items may be served raw or undercooked, so that people with compromised immune systems, the elderly, pregnant women, and young children can make an informed choice. Without that advisory, those customers have no warning.
The employee illness violations tell a separate story. When a facility has no written health policy and employees are not required to report symptoms, a worker with Norovirus, Hepatitis A, or Salmonella can spend an entire shift handling food with no mechanism to stop them. Norovirus alone accounts for roughly 20 million cases of foodborne illness in the United States each year, and food workers are a primary transmission route.
The absence of a person in charge performing duties is not a paperwork problem. CDC data shows that establishments without active managerial control accumulate critical violations at three times the rate of those with engaged management. Every other violation on this list is easier to prevent when someone responsible is watching.
Inadequate ventilation, the single intermediate violation, allows grease-laden vapors and smoke to accumulate in prep areas, creating both air quality and fire risk over time.
The Longer Record
The September 24 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Porkie's of DeLand BBQ has been inspected 47 times and has accumulated 455 total violations across its history.
The pattern in recent years is consistent. Inspectors found 7 high-severity violations on September 24. A follow-up inspection four days later, on September 28, found 5 high-severity violations and 1 intermediate. The June 18 inspection before that produced 6 high-severity violations and 3 intermediate. On September 25, 2025, one year before this inspection, the same facility logged 7 high-severity violations and 1 intermediate, an identical count to the September 24, 2026 inspection.
Going back further, the March 12, 2025 inspection found 7 high-severity violations and 2 intermediate. The July 25, 2024 inspection found 6 high-severity violations and 5 intermediate. The restaurant has logged five or more high-severity violations in seven of the eight most recently recorded inspections.
The facility has been emergency-closed twice. Both closures came in early 2020, both for rodent activity. The first closure came on February 18, 2020, with the restaurant allowed to reopen the following day. A second emergency closure for rodent activity followed on March 26, 2020, with reopening the next day. Neither closure appears to have interrupted the accumulation of high-severity violations in the years that followed.
The one outlier in the recent record is the August 21, 2024 inspection, which found zero high-severity violations and one intermediate. That inspection stands alone among the eight most recent visits.
Open for Business
State inspectors documented seven high-severity violations at Porkie's of DeLand BBQ on September 24, including food not cooked to required temperatures, toxic chemicals stored improperly near food, no employee illness reporting, no written health policy, unsanitized food contact surfaces, no consumer advisory for undercooked items, and no person in charge present or performing duties.
The restaurant was not emergency-closed.
It was the fifth time in the past eight inspections that the facility logged five or more high-severity violations in a single visit. Customers who walked in on September 24 had no notice posted on the door.
