Raymond “Griff” Griffin has come a long way since he first opened The Lost Cajun in Frisco with his wife Belinda Griffin in 2010.

His first menu only included four items, which has now been expanded to include all the traditional Cajun food Griff learned to cook when he and his wife owned a fishing lodge in New Orleans.

In 2012, the restaurant took its first steps toward franchising when Griff and his friend Jon Espey opened a second location in Breckenridge. That same year, Griff’s wife Belinda Griffin passed away.

There are now nine Lost Cajun locations in four states: Colorado, Texas, Tennessee and South Carolina. The company currently has three more restaurants under construction that should be open by the end of the year. There will be one built in Littleton, and two more in Texas. Griff said that the person contracted to open the location in Littleton is set to open another three in the Denver-Front Range area. The company projects that in 2017 they will have another 8-10 locations opening, and hopes to have as many as 50 locations in the next five years. Griff fondly called his restaurant “the little gumbo shop that could.”