ORLANDO, FL. When state inspectors walked into Stemma Craft Coffee on North Orange Avenue on July 9, they found a coffee shop operating without a written employee health policy, without a person in charge actively performing their duties, and with at least one employee who had not reported symptoms of illness as required by state code.
Six of the seven violations documented that day were classified as high severity. The facility was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The illness reporting violation sits at the center of the July 9 inspection. State code requires employees to notify a manager if they are experiencing symptoms associated with communicable illness. An inspector documented that this was not happening at Stemma.
That failure did not exist in isolation. The shop also had no written employee health policy, which is the foundational document that tells workers which symptoms trigger a reporting requirement in the first place. Without the policy, workers have no written standard to follow.
The inspector also cited improper handwashing technique, meaning employees were going through the motions of washing their hands without executing the procedure correctly. Pathogens can survive an incomplete handwash. In a coffee shop where employees handle cups, lids, and drink ingredients continuously, that matters.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Toxic substances, which could include cleaning chemicals or sanitizers, were improperly identified, stored, or used. Multi-use utensils were not properly cleaned, a finding that earned an intermediate classification but compounds the surface contamination picture.
The person in charge was either absent or not actively performing their duties when inspectors arrived.
What These Violations Mean
The illness reporting and employee health policy violations are not paperwork failures. They are the conditions under which a sick worker continues making drinks for customers without anyone stopping them.
Norovirus, the most common cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurant settings, spreads efficiently through contaminated food and surfaces. A single infected food worker can expose dozens of customers before anyone in the building knows there is a problem. The only reliable check on that scenario is a health policy that workers know, understand, and follow. Stemma had none on July 9.
The handwashing violation compounds that risk directly. Improper technique, even when an employee makes an attempt to wash, leaves enough pathogen load on the hands to transfer to food, cups, and surfaces. Combined with food contact surfaces that inspectors found were not properly sanitized, the shop had multiple simultaneous transfer points active on the same day.
The toxic substance violation adds a separate category of risk. Improper storage or use of cleaning chemicals near food or food contact surfaces can result in chemical contamination of drinks or food. In a specialty coffee environment where syrups, milks, and flavoring agents are stored alongside cleaning products, the separation between those categories is not incidental.
The Longer Record
The July 9 inspection was the tenth on record for Stemma Craft Coffee. Across those ten inspections, the facility has accumulated 22 total violations. It has never been emergency-closed.
The pattern of high-severity violations runs through nearly every inspection cycle. In January 2026, just six months before the July visit, inspectors found two high-severity violations and one intermediate. In July 2025, two high-severity violations. In July 2024, three high-severity violations. In January 2023, three more.
The facility passed cleanly in February 2024 and came close in July 2023, when only a single intermediate violation was recorded. Those two inspections stand out precisely because the others do not.
Six high-severity violations in a single visit is the worst single-inspection total in Stemma's recorded history. The prior high was three, reached twice, in July 2024 and January 2023. The July 9 visit doubled that number.
Open for Business
Florida law gives inspectors the authority to order an emergency closure when conditions pose an immediate threat to public health. The threshold typically involves active pest activity, sewage issues, or loss of utilities. High-severity violations related to illness reporting, handwashing, and surface sanitation, even six of them on the same day, do not automatically trigger that authority.
Stemma Craft Coffee was not closed on July 9.
The shop on North Orange Avenue remained open to customers after an inspection that found no written health policy, an employee who had not reported illness symptoms, improper handwashing technique, unsanitized food contact surfaces, improperly stored toxic substances, and a manager who was not doing their job.
The record shows that.
