About Janaka and Invita Food For Life

Janaka, the founder and proprietor of Invita was born in Sri Lanka where his uncle owned a biscuit and cake factory that also specialised in catering. Janaka's father was the general manager and as a child Janaka spent many hours accompanying his father at work; this marked the beginning of his interest in food.

After secondary school Janaka travelled to Switzerland and studied Hotel Management in Brig at the well known School Hotel, after this he studied baking technology at Southbank University in London where he learnt about management and catering.

After completing studying Janaka visited Melbourne for a 10 day holiday and instantly fell in love with Melbourne and the unique cafe culture; he migrated in 2002 and now calls Melbourne home.

Janaka had built up considerable experience about peoples eating habits and lifestyles; he noticed that there was a direct link with eating habits and the environment; he wanted to educate people in better ways of eating to help improve health while taking care of the environment at the same time. Janaka noticed that in Melbourne no true health food cafe's existed; businesses that professed to be health food often had items such as soft drinks and fried food along with their healthier selections. Even fresh juice bars were using concentrated juice instead of fresh fruit to make their drinks; the practice of misleading customers led Janaka to create his own business and open a "True" health food cafe.

In April 2003 Invita was born, and from day one people were drawn to the cafe for the taste and freshness of the foods and drinks served. Unlike other health food restaurants Invita food actually tastes good, patrons continue to be pleasantly surprised by this and the fact that all the food is healthy and kind to the environment is an added bonus. Invita has no deep fryers since nothing on the menu is fried. All meals, cakes and cookies are made fresh on site every day; no ingredients come out of a can or bottle and nothing sold is harmful to people's health or the environment.

The business has continued to grow over the years and now has a loyal clientele of regular customers who continue to love the fresh food and good service as well as the beautiful al fresco environment.

Janaka has only one simple rule that he and his staff follow.

The high quality of the food and service must be consistent, no exceptions!