Cell phones can now serve up souplantation locations, phone numbers: chargers aren't playing around in mobile arena.

No frills. Just the basics.

That's what a locally based restaurant chain and its Web developer reached for when adapting a Web site for the small screens on wireless devices.

On mobile phones, screens range from small to tiny. While some devices pull in data at Wi-Fi speeds, others operate much more slowly on first and second generation cellular networks.

As a result, designing for mobile devices "really is an exercise in restraint," said Brandon Zelasko, associate business manager for Red Door Interactive Inc.

Red Door recently spent two months retooling the Web site for Rancho Bernardo's Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp.--which operates 105 eateries under the Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes names in the West, South and East--optimizing the data for mobile phones. The new portion went live in mid-June.

Red Door and Garden Fresh executives declined to give the cost of the work. Red Door says businesses could expect to pay $8,000 for a similar effort.

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Customer feedback and a desire to reach out to new demographics prompted Garden Fresh to add the feature to its site, says spokeswoman Erika DiProfio. She added that the most traffic on the company's full-sized Web site comes from people looking up store locations.

The Garden Fresh mobile Web site accesses the same database used by the full-sized Garden Fresh site, and retrieves a minimal amount of data: restaurant locations, maps, hours of operation and phone numbers Clicking on a phone number will put through a call to the restaurant.

Users can search by state or ZIP code.

On The Go

The site is geared to people on the go who need a small amount of information quickly, rather than people in a chair, idly surfing the Internet.

The Starbucks coffee chain offers a similar site for mobile Web users

For Souplantation, Red Door added software that alerts the Garden Fresh server it is sending material to a mobile device rather than a regular browser, and the server should adjust the data accordingly.

Users can click a button to shift to the full-sized Web site, if their device's browser can utilize the data.

Garden Fresh executives also have a very small space--roughly 30 characters--to insert promotional text, which changes periodically.

On the back end, Red Door puts together an analytics package to gather information about those using the mobile site.

The company, which describes itself as an Internet presence management firm, also spent time researching mobile phone standards.

Other San Diego businesses have adapted their sites to the small screen. The San Diego Union-Tribune publisher, The Copicy Press Inc., offers a small-screen version of its Signonsandiego.com Web site.

Visitors to signon.mobi encounter a home page with a small news photo and a dozen links to news stories and other newspaper features.

Small-Screen Action

The area's professional sports teams also have an eye on the small screen.

Joel Price, manager of Internet services for the San Diego Chargers, says the football club plans to roll out a new version of its Web site in March. The site will better accommodate mobile devices and offer "a better game:day experience."

Why the upgrade? "You always want to stay fresh," Price said.

Besides, 30-year-old A.G. Spanos, who oversees the Chargers' business operations as their executive officer, uses mobile phone technology.

The National Football League will help pay for the site work upfront, Price says, adding that the team hopes to make the money back with sponsorships.

For its part, the San Diego Padres baseball team offers text and images for mobile phone users.

The content is coordinated by Major League Baseball Advanced Media in New York, which recently unveiled an application called MLB at Bat, optimized for the Apple iPhone 3G, which went on sale July 11. The application offers video clips.