Longmont Chef Withdraws Rising Tiger Team From The Great Food Truck Race

For viewers of the popular Food Network series The Great Food Truck Race, it was a surprise ending to top all surprise endings. At the close of the two-hour premiere of season 18 on Sunday, August 3, the team with the lowest sales totals was to be eliminated from the competition in Savannah, Georgia. That team was Eat My Biscuits from Atlanta. The second lowest sales belonged to Rising Tiger, the team from Longmont led by chef Devin Keopraphay.

But as Eat My Biscuits was about to hand over its keys to host Tyler Florence, Keopraphay announced, to gasps from other teams, "Due to personal reasons, I want to retire the team from the competition. Sorry, but we got things to take care of back home."

Florence was flabbergasted: Despite its low sales numbers, Rising Tiger had won two challenges over the other teams. After the first, Florence gave a $300 bonus to Rising Tiger for its dish, Taiwanese pork cutlet sandwich. In the second challenge, the truck's fried banana sold the most servings during the second day of the competition.

Florence accepted the withdrawal, but added that even though Keopraphay had assumed that meant Eat My Biscuits could stay in the contest, the rules stated that the team with the lowest sales would be eliminated — so both teams exited.

Since the episode aired last night, Keopraphay says he's received hundreds of emails and social media messages, many supportive of his decision but some asking why he would turn his back on such an opportunity; he's planning on explaining his decision via social media. For now, he shares that family was the reason. His mother called while he was on location in Georgia. She was in Longmont, watching his daughter, and asked if he could come home because she needed to see his brother, who is active military.

"My mom said she wanted to see him before he was deployed, so it was a hard decision to leave, but I feel like I made the right one," he says, and he wanted to support both his mother and brother. "Sure, I expected some controversy from the decision to put family first, but I didn't realize it would be this big."

For now, he'll be back every Saturday at the Longmont Farmers' Market, while also looking for a future home for a brick-and-mortar Rising Tiger. He's also considering "pivoting" to expand his brand in Longmont, and is now mulling ideas.

Until recently, his plans for a brick-and-mortar restaurant were more concrete. But just before the first episode of The Great Food Truck Race aired, he posted on his Instagram account that he and his main funder had parted ways — so that project has been pushed back for now.

"As most of you know, we've been in the process and planning of a brick & mortar for just shy of a year now. Surprise, surprise, establishing a restaurant is complicated, unclear, and downright costly," he posted.  "So I'm sad to announce that we will be postponing our brick & mortar. This isn't a quit by any means.

"It's a stand for what I believe in. Call me a fool. Call me broke. Call me dumb."
Some viewers might call him the same thing for pulling out of The Great Food Truck Race. But Keopraphay is adamant that he did the right thing. He's confident that his culinary instincts will help him achieve his dreams, with or without television fanfare. Besides, as his short-lived appearance showed, he has the goods when it comes to the food.

As he handed over his keys and the show was wrapping out, Devin called out to host Florence, "Food was good, though?"

And Florence replied without hesitation:  "Food was amazing, brother!"