I’m admittedly quite prudent with my hard-earned, but I can’t be the only person that thinks that eating out is a more often than not a combination of good value food, and expensive drink.

And in pubs, you can make that great value food.

Even 25 years ago, I remember the then Marketing Director of Greenalls already saying to me that as an industry we had become guilty of selling cheap food with expensive drink.

And their beer was dismal.

You wouldn’t expect your food retailer to sell keenly priced food with poor value drink would you? Yet in foodservice, it has become a norm.

In the current consumer downturn it really surprises me that we have not seen more attempts in the UK to promote BYO nights. To the average Aussie (and I am not one) taking your own good bottle of wine to the restaurant is perfectly normal. The whole eating out occasion immediately takes on a different value equation.

So, I’m grateful to my good mate Peter Martin at Peach Factory (www.peach-report.com) for alerting me to the fact that M&B’s Browns restaurants are running a BYO promotion in January.

Having said that, it appears to be confined to its ‘Friends’ database, but it’s a good start.