Vol. I, No. 55 · San Francisco — Monday, October 26, 2026 · Price: unchanged since 1856, except the address
BY EMMETT GRADY, ARCHIVES
At 774 Commercial Street in Chinatown, Mow Lee Company still makes its sausages and other cured and dried meats on the premises. Each batch is marinated in soy sauce and wine, then dried slowly in an oven over several days. The family that owns the shop says it has done this since 1856.
On June 22, the city accepted that account. San Francisco’s Small Business Commission added Mow Lee to the Legacy Business Registry, the list the city keeps of long-running businesses it counts as cultural assets and tries to help stay open. The shop’s application says it needs that help. Its longtime customers are aging, foot traffic fell after the pandemic, and “the skills required to produce these products are not easily taught or replaced.” Of the 57 businesses the city has added this year, Mow Lee is the oldest. Only three of the 491 are older: Boudin Bakery (1849), the Old Ship Saloon (1851) and the Mechanics’ Institute (1855). It is also the oldest of the 25 in Chinatown.
The application, filed by co-owner Warren Lee, gives the shop three addresses. It opened at 745 Sacramento Street, which the earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed. It reopened at 730 Grant Avenue, an address the family dates with a 1949 Chinese telephone directory. Sometime between 1949 and 1953 it moved to Commercial Street, into a building the application dates to 1907.
Its table of owners starts with Pon Dai Guen, 1856 to 1900, and Pon Get, 1900 to 1930. The next line reads “Unknown,” for 1930 to 1950. Pon Yee Zhong held it to 1975, and Yee Dor Lam and Tina Jew to 1999. Jian Lian Cheng and Pun Wun Lee followed, to 2015, and George, Gerald and Warren Lee have owned it since. Jian Lian Cheng still works in the shop alongside them, the application says.
The application calls the founders “early Chinese immigrant merchants,” at the time a legal status. The 1882 Chinese exclusion law barred Chinese laborers from immigrating and made every Chinese traveler carry a certificate of status, merchant among them. Pon Get held the business entirely under those laws, which Congress did not repeal until 1943.
Langley’s San Francisco Directory for 1882 lists the city’s “principal Chinese business firms,” and Mow Lee is not among them. The list does carry Lun Chong & Co., “meat and groceries,” at 745 Sacramento, the address the family gives for the shop’s first half-century. The page cannot say whether the two are one business. Nine other directories from 1861 to 1926 do not list Mow Lee either, though their scanned text is rough. The 1856 date rests on the family’s own history, which the city’s planners reviewed and accepted. “The business was founded in 1856,” their report says.
A business must have run in San Francisco for 30 years, or 20 if it is at risk of being forced out, so few founded after the mid-1990s qualify. It must also be nominated by a supervisor or the mayor. Members can get marketing help, business assistance and grants, the city says. Supervisor Danny Sauter, who nominated Mow Lee on May 6, wrote that it “is widely regarded as one of the last businesses in Chinatown still making these products entirely by hand.”
The commission attached one condition to the listing. To stay on the registry, Mow Lee must keep the single feature its resolution names, in two words: “Meat Store.”
San Francisco’s federal business tax ID filings hit a record 20,682 as private jobs fell
Requests for a federal business tax ID rose 46 percent from 2022 as private-sector jobs fell three years running. Measured from 2019, the filings grew a little slower than the nation’s.
BY MEL ADLER, COMMERCE DESK
Last year, applications for a new federal business tax number came in from San Francisco about 57 times a day. The number, an employer identification number, is what a new business gets from the IRS, hiring or not.
That came to 20,682 applications in 2025, the most in the 21 years the Census Bureau has counted them by county, and 46 percent more than in 2022. Over the same three years San Francisco’s private-sector jobs fell by 47,950, to 586,454, a slide this paper first reported on July 24. The two numbers disagree on whether the city is coming back, but they may be one story counted twice. A worker who leaves a payroll job to consult drops out of the jobs count and into the filings count. Neither file can say how often.
The pandemic set off a national rush of new filings that San Francisco mostly sat out. By 2021 the country’s count was up 54 percent from 2019 and the city’s 20 percent, and in 2022 the city’s fell back, to 14,177. It has climbed every year since. Measured from 2019, San Francisco is up 56 percent, a little behind the nation’s 62 percent and ahead of California’s 52.
A filing is not a hire. In California, 58,566 of the 519,695 applications filed in 2021 had a payroll within two years, or 11 percent. No later year has been followed that long. For 2019’s filings the share was 15 percent. No such figure exists for the county. Nationally, the applications the Census Bureau flags as likely to hire grew 30 percent from 2019 to 2025, half as fast as all applications.
The likeliest reading, held with moderate confidence, is that more San Franciscans are starting small: one-person companies, contractors and side businesses that need a tax number and no staff. Whether the new filers are AI startups, consultants or food vendors, the county file cannot say, because it carries no industry. The Census Bureau also adds a little random noise to county counts to protect filers’ privacy. It is small beside a three-year gain of 6,505.
ON THE CALENDAR
San Francisco Syntax Meetup. A no-agenda evening for web developers, hosted by the crew of the web-development podcast Syntax the day before GitHub’s Universe conference, with “some folks from Sentry.” It is full: 522 people had registered as of early Sunday, up from 15 when the page first appeared on August 27. The page calls it a repeat of “the last two years’ events,” though Luma does not list it as a series.
Tuesday, October 27, 5 p.m. · Barebottle Beer Garden at Salesforce Park · free · lu.ma/5ng6bniy
From the desk’s calendar: public Luma pages, counts as of 1:46 a.m. October 25. Tell the desk about the gathering it missed.
SOURCES & RECEIPTS
1. Mow Lee Company, Legacy Business Registry case file LBR-2025-26-049 (api.sf.gov/documents/59289), fetched October 26, 2026: application by Warren Lee, co-owner, with photographs; ownership table and addresses as printed (the narrative gives 2016 for the latest handover); nomination by Supervisor Danny Sauter, May 6, 2026; Planning executive summary for the June 3, 2026 preservation hearing; Small Business Commission resolution, June 22, 2026. Founding date, owners and process are the family’s account as filed. 2. San Francisco Office of Small Business, Legacy Business Registry map layer (services.arcgis.com/Zs2aNLFN00jrS4gG, legacy_biz), queried October 26, 2026: 551 active locations, 491 businesses by nomination number; founded 1970–1989: 238; before 1906: 18; Chinatown: 25; certified in 2026: 57, Mow Lee the oldest. 3. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts.” 4. Langley’s San Francisco Directory for the year commencing April 1882, Internet Archive item langleyssanfranc0000vari, “Principal Chinese Business Firms.” Nine other directories, 1861–1926: no “Mow Lee” in rough scanned text. 5. sf.gov, “Apply to join the Legacy Business Registry,” visited October 26, 2026; the 20-year exception is in the commission’s resolution. Queries in receipts.json.
2. U.S. Census Bureau, Business Formation Statistics, annual business applications by county, 2005–2025 (released June 10, 2026, with privacy noise), downloaded October 26, 2026. San Francisco: 2005 8,088; 2019 13,256; 2021 15,920; 2022 14,177; 2025 20,682. All counties: 2019 3,496,489; 2021 5,387,124; 2025 5,671,898. California: 364,924; 553,933. 57 a day: 20,682 ÷ 365. 7. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, annual averages, San Francisco County, private (data.bls.gov/cew/data/api), queried October 26, 2026: jobs 2019 659,150; 2022 634,404; 2023 617,513; 2024 597,405; 2025 586,454. Prior story: The Frisconian, July 24, 2026. 8. Census Bureau, BFS monthly file, California, not seasonally adjusted: applications 2019 365,071, 2021 519,695; became employers within eight quarters 54,654 and 58,566; none yet for 2022 on, none by county. U.S. high-propensity applications, 2019 and 2025: 1,316,191 and 1,708,842; all: 3,498,990 and 5,671,836. Queries in receipts.json.
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