NORTHAMPTON — Since opening for live performances nearly three years ago, Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity has become known for their live performances and art exhibitions. Now, with the help of a longtime Pioneer Valley culinary creative, the center looks to get further into the food game too.

Starting Sept. 13, the center, located at the Florence Congregational Church, will serve as a pickup location for pre-made meal kits, with the meals already available to order online. The meals will be made by O’Brian Tomalin, who once designed meals at the famed downtown Northampton staple Sierra Grille before its shutdown in 2020.

Tomalin has worked with Bombyx before, having catered several live events at the center, often preparing dishes that align with the event’s theme. For example, he served a traditional Irish stew during a St. Patrick’s Day concert, and soul food to accompany a performance of blues music. On one occasion, Tomalin recreated the food served from an 1873 variety show performance in Williamsburg after the center had found a copy of the original flyer.

“I think I roasted 12 whole chickens for that,” Tomalin recalled. “I did au gratin potatoes, which I figured was within artistic license, and tried to use as minimal exotic spicing as possible.”

For the meal kit service, orders are to be placed in advance online, with a deadline of Wednesday the week the meals are made. Tomalin then will prepare the meals — each week will be a specific planned meal — with the final product available for pickup the Friday of that week from 4 to 6 p.m. The meals will cost $60 for four people.

The kitchen at Bombyx has been used since the center’s opening, with food trucks renting out the space for meal prep and caterers using it to serve dinner at various events. To accommodate Tomalin and other future users, Bombyx recently secured a grant $8,500 from the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism to replace outdated equipment and add an additional sink space, allowing more cooks to use the space in compliance with the city’s health department.

“We’re switching out the two-sink basins for a three-sink basin, and we’re getting rid of our outdated commercial freezers and replacing those,” said Bombyx Executive Director Cassandra Holden. “We’re reconfiguring our countertops and just making the workflow in here more efficient, so we can welcome more chefs to do prep work.”

Though always a precarious businesses, running a traditional restaurant has become even more difficult since the advent of the pandemic. Costs of food supplies and commercial kitchen space has risen, as have the dining-out habits of most consumers when determining their evening meals.

For a chef who likes taking a slower, traditional approach to cooking like Tomalin, those changes can be particularly challenging.

“Everything’s just costing more and more,” Tomalin said. “The places that made it through COVID and did well have a low cost center plate, the traditional pizza or Chinese, stuff that was geared toward take out did well.”

In creating the new meal kit services, Bombyx will become part of a larger trend of meal-kit delivery and preparation services that have exploded in popularity since the pandemic, with services like Blue Apron and HelloFresh becoming household names.

“We’re just experimenting to see what we can do with food in this kitchen that’s really meaningful for this community,” Holden said. “You don’t have to sit down with us, but we can give you something wonderful to sit down with your family.”

The first meal Tomalin plans to produce is a roasted chicken meal with several sides, with the whimsical title of the meal “Winner Winner Chicken Dinner.” The next planned meal, aimed for the end of September, is a macaroni and cheese dish similarly titled “Easy-Peasy Mac and Cheesy.”

“We like kitcshy names,” Holden said.

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.