I think this is a particular article related to San Francisco, and not the US in general.

And even more specifically retail food service, one of the more regulation-heavy areas. Starting a small tech business is a lot easier.

And, considering the 3 countries ranked higher are the size of medium to medium-small US states, the USA would seem to be doing pretty well.

If "doing pretty well" looks like this on a global scale, we've got some serious issues to resolve.

Of course, I suspect the actual issue is that this is the food industry, which is (as already mentioned) heavily regulated for not entirely unreasonable reasons.

Regulating food safety might be reasonable, but none of the regulations being discussed are related to food safety.

(At least, I don't think they are. Is a toaster in a coffee shop somehow unsanitary?)

Probably not. I said "not entirely unreasonable" rather than "reasonable" for a reason.

Anyway, my main point was that if the US is really in the top four countries for ease of doing business, we have a major problem.

The USA ranks #10 in the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. (I think their methodology is more accurate) http://www.heritage.org/index/default