Beyond meals on wheels.

• Position: Charlotte

It's a Thursday afternoon in a Charlotte craft brewer's taproom. David Stuck drinks a beer while chatting about his business, which happens to be parked outside serving tacos. Not ordinary tacos, these are made with brisket, chipotle coleslaw and duck confit. "I love a good taco," he says between sips. "What can I say?" It's his day off, but he's here anyway with The TIN Truck (formerly The TIN Kitchen), the bread van he converted into a food truck. But Stuck and his partners--Nick Lischerong and Charlie Reid, his primary chef--are driving it in an unusual direction.

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In April, they opened TK Cafe, a 1,200-square-foot takeout place in a 19-story office tower in downtown Charlotte. It serves breakfast and lunch, including hot sandwiches, salads, juices and smoothies. One of the building's owners, in search of a novel food tenant, offered to rent it at a substantial discount. "Not saying it's going to work," Stuck says, "but we figured, 'What the heck?" Lischerong, a developer and investment manager, is bankrolling most of the cafe's cost.

Their food truck, which debuted in January 2012, will keep rolling. But it'll be just a wing of the business, which is changing its name from The Artisan Gourmet Group LLC to The TIN Partners. They also will add to their staff of four full-time and seven part-time employees. "I got into this with the ambition to grow, and I can do only so much out of the truck," Stuck, 30, says. He plans to open a second TK Cafe downtown before the end of the year and, eventually, a full-service restaurant.

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Stuck, who is from Columbia, S.C., owned a furniture store there before it went under in the recession. Looking for a new career, he drove cross-country and...