First look: New food van The Canberra Bagel Co.

Why does one open a bagel company?

"There was a hole in the market," joked Damian Brabender, co-owner of the new Canberra Bagel Co.

Brabender and business partner Adam Wilson have known each other for eight years, working together first in London, and again now at Brabender's Good Food Guide hatted restaurant Otis in Kingston.

"We were going to open a small cafe out the back of Otis, which was going to be a bagel shop, But we thought wouldn't it be cool to have it mobile? So we started looking around different food vans and caravans, and we ended up biting the silver bullet and splashing out a lot more than we anticipated," Brabender said.

Their moveable digs is a new silver airstream-style caravan, custom-made in Sydney, and they plan to add a solar panel on the roof.

A lot of time and love has gone into perfecting their bagels, which are made Montreal-style over a two-day process in the Otis kitchen.

Bagels will be served up as breakfast sandwiches. The menu has four sandwich options - three savoury fillings and one sweet - and the menu will have a particular focus on deli-style fillings.

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and if you can make it filled with deli meats then that's pretty cool too," said Brabender.

If you can't stomach a whole bagel, they will also be sold by the half, smeared with cream cheese. Some individual bagels will also be available for sale with small tubs of schmear to spread on at home.

The duo will be baking most of the bagels themselves but a small amount will be supplied with a 'breadier' consistency to make a 'squish' - a panini-style toasted bagel.

A retro coffee machine is also being installed in the van, which will pour coffee from fellow-Kingston business, Highgate Lane Roasters.

The van will pop-up around Canberra, with the possibility of going further afield in the future.

"The idea of being portable is we don't have to be locked in. We will have a calendar of certain places we'll be on certain days, but the whole thing will be more sporadic. It will be more if people ask us to come somewhere, we can do it," said Brabender.

The van is ready to roll and pop-ups will be starting soon. To track them down, see facebook.com/CanberraBagelCo.