Save your dimes, these booths take cellphones

Michael Salemi hates it when other diners' cellphone conversations interrupt his intimate dinners, but he concedes that he is equally annoyed when the background noise in a restaurant interrupts his own calls.

``You can't even hear yourself talk or think, let alone talk on a cellphone," he said.

So Salemi, a 47-year-old former general manager of a medical devices firm, invested in a new twist on an old idea, partnering with three brothers and a friend to develop the CellZone , a soundproof booth where chatty patrons at restaurants, nightclubs, and libraries can talk freely without bothering anyone. It's a phone booth for the wireless set.

His company, Salemi Industries Inc. of Woburn, began marketing CellZones for between $2,400 and $3,500 at last month's National Restaurant Show in Chicago. By his estimation, the market is ripe: Every one of the nearly 700,000 restaurants and 40,000 nightclubs in the country is a potential customer.

And that's before you get to librarians like Kathryn Ames , who's considering buying a trio of CellZones to quiet the babble of cellphone-addicted students who frequent the library she runs in Athens, Ga.

``We're doing a 20,000-square-foot addition and I might just do a whole long row of cellphone booths," said Ames, who found Salemi's company by Googling ``cellphone booths" and giving the firm a call. Salemi thinks nightclubs and construction sites are potential customers, too. US Cellular ordered two CellZones to install at promotional booths it plans to run at a series of concerts this summer.

But not everyone is ready to install the next-generation phone booth. Greg Den Herder , co-owner and managing partner of 33 Restaurant & Lounge in the Back Bay, said his patrons expect to be able to use their phones as they please, but generally they have to make calls from his vestibule because reception inside the building is spotty. More formal restaurants, Den Herder predicted, might find the idea of a CellZone more compelling.

Even some librarians balk at the idea. Officials considered building three or four such booths into the plans for a new Mattapan branch of the Boston Public Library, but scuttled those plans before they spoke to any vendors, said a spokeswoman, Alexandra Merceron . The Mattapan branch and most Boston libraries have rooms where cellphones can be used without risking a librarian's ``shhhh!," Merceron said.

Some restaurants already have noise-abatement strategies in place -- some taken from antiquity, some, like 33 Restaurant & Lounge, through signal-blocking architecture. At Doyle's Cafe in Jamaica Plain, patrons occasionally duck into the pay-phone booths to use their cellphones. A sign at the cash register of the new Upper Crust pizza on Newbury Street asks patrons to finish cellphone calls before ordering.

Brick Loomis , assistant manager at Aujourd'hui restaurant in the Four Seasons hotel, said patrons have grown more accepting of cellphones. But he still finds open use of the devices in restaurants rude and said he would consider installing CellZones if they matched the establishment's decor. ``We'd certainly entertain the idea," he said.

Restaurant patrons' reactions were mixed. Outside Vinny T's of Boston in the Back Bay, Alyssa Vincent , 18 , said she hoped restaurants would install the booths and that they would prevent incidents like the one she witnessed at a New York restaurant. ``Someone was screaming on their phone and they threw it across the restaurant. It was pretty scary," she said.

Jen Bernstein , 28, of Boston , said she'd love to see them installed in restaurants, but doubted rude guests would use them. ``I don't think the people doing it would have the courtesy to walk into a booth," she said.

Scott Arden , 22 , of the Back Bay, proves her point: He said he'll talk on his cell whenever and wherever he pleases.

``The purpose of having a cellphone is to use it wherever you want. I feel like restricting the areas where you can use it defeats the purpose," he said.

Salemi isn't the only entrepreneur who sees gold in this quiet niche market. The Atlanta Telephone Booth Co. makes custom booths with or without pay phones inside . But according to Steven Konsin , the company's principal, the firm hasn't taken a single order in the 10 months since its founding.

Konsin said he's not worried that the concept has not taken off yet because he expects most of his orders to come from architects and entrepreneurs as they build new facilities.

``It's kind of a long-term sell. A fixture like this has to be worked into the plans of a building," he said.

C.P. Booth Inc. , another Atlanta company, started making retro-style phone booths, sans phones, last year and is marketing them to restaurants as an option for their cellphone patrons. Officials at that company did not return calls.

Keith Reed can be reached at reed@globe.com.