A locally owned restaurant featuring build-your-own pastas and hot-and-ready flatbreads is coming to The Empire Mall.

Thyme Cafe & Catering, which started in Lennox and moved to Sioux Falls with the new year, is taking a space in the mall’s food court.

Owner Taylor Massey said she will continue to operate her first location, which is at Signature Flight Support at Joe Foss Field. She serves breakfast and lunch there, provides catering services and also offers take-and-bake meals, which she has suspended while she gets the restaurant started at the mall.

“The goal is to be open for sure May 1,” she said.

Diners will get to customize their pasta with cavatappi or penne noodles and marinera, alfredo or mac-and-cheese sauce. There will be meat choices such as seasoned ground beef, meatballs, chicken and bacon, and vegetables such as sauteed peppers, onions and mushrooms; spinach and diced tomatoes.

Options could change based on customer preferences, she said.

“And we’ll have hot-and-ready flatbreads, just for the turnaround time. There will be staples like cheese, pepperoni and sausage, and we’ll do a couple like barbecue chicken, Mediterranean – we’ve created a sundried tomato and prosciutto recipe – and a Thai sweet chile chicken.”

The flatbread crusts will be made from scratch, Massey said.

Thyme Cafe also will offer dessert, and she’ll select those offerings based on avoiding duplication with what other restaurants at the mall are serving.

Hours will be the same as the mall, she said.

Expanding so quicky “was an unexpected twist that I just jumped on,” Massey said.

She had been looking at the former Royal Fork building on the mall’s campus, “but they auctioned off a lot of their equipment there, and it was an empty shell, so for a small business, it’s not a smart investment right away. But the goal is to grow larger.”