These aren't your elementary school's tater tots.

These tater tots are elevated with homemade sausage gravy, or are topped with exotic ingredients like kimchi or carnitas. And they're on a food truck.

Birmingham natives Michael Cannova and Seth Beisher are launching Tot Spot and are hoping to get rolling by June.

"My favorite food in the whole world is tater tots, so over the years, every time I saw a tater tot on the menu it just kind of trumped any other kind of starch down there, whether its onion rings, homemade fries, shoestring fries, tater tots always win," Cannova said. "I saw it as a great canvas. It's salty, savory, and I just started to think how can I elevate this?"

Cannova, 34, left Birmingham in 2001 to go to college at the University of Alabama, then moved around the country before landing in Manhattan. He's been a creative director at an ad agency the last few years. For now, he's going to run the truck from New York.

"Just coming home over the past couple of years I thought, this place is really starting to pop, and seeing that people were a little more open to these newer concepts," Cannova said. "Grabbing a bite to eat from a truck wasn't such a foreign idea anymore."

Cannova is planning for the truck to serve breakfast and lunch and is still developing some of the recipes. One idea he's working with takes a classic southern favorite of biscuits and gravy and replaces the biscuit with tots.

"I'm way more of a potato fan than a biscuit fan, so we took the sausage gravy and poured it over some homemade russet potato tots and it's that simple," Cannova said. "It's that nice, spicy country sausage gravy that you grew up with."

Another option he's calling "Cinnatots" - sweet potato tots tossed in cinnamon and sugar and drizzled with cream cheese icing.

For lunch, one idea struck Cannova when he was home visiting and stopped at Miss Myra's in Cahaba Heights. He got the same thing he's been ordering since he was a kid - two barbecue sandwiches, one with white sauce and one with the dark red sauce.

"I always ate them separately, and I thought, why don't we eat them together?"

So he put his two favorite barbecue sauces on tots and it just worked.

The pair is still nailing down its exact menu, but Cannova said he expects to be open by June. Check the truck's Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to find out where it's stopping.

Cannova said New York has hundreds of food trucks, but he wanted to open one in his hometown to be part of the city's resurgence.

"This is something where I wanted to give a little back to Birmingham," Cannova said. "Birmingham inspired me to go into the arts, and now that I've gotten that chance, and I've had great success a little bit, it's time to give back a little, and that's what I'm doing with Tot Spot."