Manufacturing booming in old and new ways during...

It wasn’t that long ago that San Francisco was a big-time manufacturing town — shipyards, ironworks, canneries, box factories, big bakeries, everything. The Mechanics Monument on Market Street — iron men working with steel — celebrates that spirit.

But even in these high-tech days in San Francisco, the city still is a big manufacturing center. But to understand it you have to think small.

Except for operations like the BAE San Francisco Shipyard on the southern waterfront, the big companies have left San Francisco. What’s left of the traditional outfits are small, old-line machine shops and the like.

But local manufacturing hasn’t disappeared and is booming in old and new ways.

Nonprofit SFMade

Many of the businesses belong to a nonprofit called SFMade,which helps develop local products. SFMade says there are 650 local manufacturers in San Francisco, employing 5,000 or so workers and generating $614 million to the economy last year. Some are old, like the McRoskey Mattress Co., founded in San Francisco 116 years ago. Some are recent, like the Harmonic Brewing Co., which opened a plant and a taproom at 26th and Minnesota streets in the Dogpatch neighborhood just this spring.

Some have famous products like Anchor Steam Beer with 225 employees and Bi Rite Markets with 265 workers. Others are tiny niche companies, like Prisma Guitars, which makes guitars from broken skateboards.

Dogpatch, a kind of niche neighborhood between Interstate 280 and the bay, is ground zero for the new manufacturing boom. “It’s kind of a new hub for new industry now,” said SFMade Senior Director Janet Lees, who led a mini tour of small businesses last week.

We started at the McRoskey Mattress plant on Minnesota Street. This neck of the woods was once full of salvage yards and railroad spurs, complete with fierce junkyard dogs. Later it became a warehouse and machine shop area. McRoskey moved its factory and about 20 production workers there 15 years ago from the company showroom and plant on Market Street.

30 mattresses a week

Inside, it’s a wonderland of strange-looking machines that build mattresses from the springs up, fill them with cotton and polyester, heat the metal parts to bind them, sew and turn the mattresses. Machines do a lot of the heavy work, but much of it is done by hand. Production is small —about 30 mattresses a week, said production manager Ed Rahmer.

The mattresses command a high-end price, too, from $4,200 to $8,500 for a top-of-the-line mattress. “Our customers are a who’s who of tech glitterati and famous athletes,” said Kaytea Petro, McRoskey’s marketing manager. “We have one customer who buys a new mattress every time he gets a new girlfriend.”

Who is that? A smile. “My lips are sealed,” Petro said.

We walked up the street, past new condo buildings under construction, past weary buildings that seemed about to fall down, to the just-opened retail showroom of Poco Dolce Confections on Third Street, in the former cannery building.

Poco Dolce means “just a little bit sweet” in Italian, said Kathy Wiley, the firm’s founder and owner. Her signature product, handmade dark chocolate topped with sea salt, is called “Tiles.”

“I always wanted a small business, and I wanted to be in food,” she said.

Wiley picked chocolate and handmade candy with sea salt “because I knew I had to stand out,” to be different to be in San Francisco. Just over a dozen people work there.

‘Provide a nice product’

The times and the product are right, Wiley said. A handsome box with eight pieces of chocolate retails for $22. They are designed as hostess gifts for holidays or special occasions. A small box — a favor, it’s called — with two chocolates is $6.

“If you want to survive in San Francisco,” she said, “you have to provide a nice product.”

Next door is Bryr, which means “to care” in Swedish. Here a very small operation makes and sells clogs for women, all custom made. Bryr is run by Isobel Schofield, who has a British accent and an upbeat manner.

Tapping fashion trend

She was a fashion designer, but got tired of the pressures of the industry, learned the shoe business, made a business plan, and here she is. There are four employees, and they sell about 70 to 80 pair a week, all made to order for about $270. Schofield said she has tapped a fashion trend.

“It’s amazing,” she said. “Bay Area women are saying, ‘Yes! Clogs!’”

The new manufacturing is not like the old, blue-collar, tough guy stuff.

“But here we are in this wonderful building,” Wiley said. “We make clothes, wine, beer, chocolate. What’s not to like?”

Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His column appears every Sunday. Email: cnolte@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carlnoltesf