Cajun Salvage Broadband

Sometimes the best businesses don’t start with a big plan. They start with nothing: no money, no equipment, no idea what you’re doing. Just a problem to solve, a skill in your back pocket, and the determination to figure it out.

That’s how Christiaan’s two guests on this edition of Out to Lunch ended up where they are. One is making home furnishings from scraps. The other turned a pine tree into a broadband company. Both, you might say, made something from nothing.

Matthew Latiolais is the owner of Cajun Salvage Company. Matthew grew up in Lafayette and got his first lesson in welding at sixteen from a boatbuilder — thanks to his grandfather, who volunteered him for the job.

Matthew Latiolais, Owner of Cajun Salvage Company, started out just salvaging wood that was headed for the trash and transitoned into fashioning it into functional pieces of home decor

After college, Matthew spent his early career in the oilfield, but when the industry hit a downturn, he found himself sending out résumés to nowhere. Eventually, he decided the only thing left to do was work for himself.

In 2015, Matthew founded Cajun Salvage, a shop specializing in woodworking, metal fabrication, and architectural salvage. His first jobs came from tearing down barns and reclaiming materials. Now he builds everything from custom cabinets to cypress tables to barn doors — often based on whatever clients find on Pinterest. He’s also a Master Craftsman and a member of the Louisiana Crafts Guild.

Chris Disher is Managing Director ofCajun Broadband. Chris is a mechanical engineer by training, born in Ponchatoula and raised in Morgan City. He spent more than two decades in oil and gas, living and working all over the world.

Chris Disher, Managing Director of Cajun Broadband, leads a team of enthusiastic locally-minted fiber experts to bring high speed internet connections to Acadiana’s countryside

When Chris and his family moved to a blueberry farm in St. Martin Parish, they ran into a different kind of problem: terrible internet. Chris’s kids begged him to sell the farm and move to the city, but instead Chris and a friend stuck an antenna in a pine tree and got 60 megabits per second. That was the start of Cajun Broadband.

Founded in 2017, the company now provides fiber and wireless internet to nine parishes, and employs 10 people. Cajun Broadband grew even faster through state and federal broadband grants: the company landed a $26 million grant to connect 9,000 homes. Chris says they started in a tree, and now their service is faster than some city providers.

Chris Disher, Managing Director of Cajun Broadband, Out to Lunch at Tsunami Sushi, Downtown Lafayette

Matthew Latiolais, Owner of Cajun Salvage Company, Out to Lunch at Tsunami Sushi in Downtown Lafayette

Chris and Matthew’s business histories, though as different as analog wood and digital fiber, are both proof that sometimes the best way forward is to stop waiting for someone else to solve the problem, and just build the solution yourself. It doesn’t get much more Cajun than that. And that’s how you get Cajun Salvage and Cajun Broadband.

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi.

Photos by Astor Morgan.