brown bags

Brown bags are plain paper sacks, typically tan or kraft-colored, used for carrying lunches or concealing bottles.

To brown-bag is to bring lunch from home rather than buying it: I brown-bag it most days to save money.

A brown-bag lunch or meeting is one where participants bring their own food.

Brown-bagging alcohol—drinking from a bottle wrapped in a paper bag—skirts public drinking laws more symbolically than legally.