Mimosa flights are running $16 to $32 on American brunch menus. Millers All Day in Charleston charges $32 for one, and $28 for its bloody mary flight.

And no foodservice distributor in the country stocks the equipment to serve them. Search WebstaurantStore for "mimosa flight" and you get nothing — the entire trade channel files flights under beer. Every category name, every product photograph, every buying guide.

That gap is the opportunity. This is a guide to running the format: what venues charge, how the service actually works, what to check before buying a board, and what a four-glass station costs.

KSESTOR Drink Flight Board — four 5 oz dishwasher-safe glasses and an erasable chalk marker included, so each flight goes out labelled. $34.99 each, or $27.99 at ten units. View the board and trade pricing →

Why the format is working now

NIQ's 2026 US on-premise outlook reports that small-format cocktails and curated flights are "scaling from niche to menu feature," serving trial, temperature maintenance, affordability and moderation at once. The same report notes that "visual quality is the new table stakes" — clean glassware and precise presentation are now baseline expectations rather than a differentiator.

There is also a hard-dollar argument, though it comes from the beer side and should be read as directional rather than transferable. A POS study of 8,447 taproom visits found guests offered a flight spent 27% more, and that staff suggested one on only 25% of visits, down from 36%. That is beer flights in taprooms, not mimosa flights in brunch rooms. But it points at the same thing: the format is under-offered, not saturated.

What to charge

Verified US menu prices for drink flights cluster like this:

• Mimosa flight: $16–$32, most often around $25
• Bloody mary flight: $24–$28
• Margarita flight: $15–$17
• Wine or rosé flight: $15–$23

Four pours is the standard configuration. The pricing logic is the same one that works for cocktail trees: the per-drink rate sits below your à la carte price, and you gain on ticket size, on the table choosing you for the format, and on fewer trips from a bar already under Sunday pressure.

The compliance angle worth knowing

Bottomless brunch is restricted or prohibited in several states — Pennsylvania, Texas and Massachusetts among them. In those markets a fixed-serve flight is the compliant way to sell a multi-drink brunch offer: a defined number of defined pours, priced as one item.

Confirm your own state's rules with your ABC before building a menu around it. But if you are operating somewhere bottomless is off the table, the flight is not a trend — it is the workaround.

How the service actually runs

Build the flight at the bar, label it, and carry it out. Diageo Bar Academy's guidance is to prepare flights immediately before serving so drinks are never left "dying on the pass."

Three practical points for a brunch room specifically:

• Label the pours. The whole appeal is comparison. A guest who cannot tell the blood orange from the grapefruit is drinking four mimosas, not a flight.
• Sparkling wine is the constraint, not the juice. Four 5 oz pours per flight moves through bottles quickly. Size your par to the covers you actually turn.
• It is table service, not self-serve. A staff-carried flight is operationally and legally the same as any other order. An unattended tray of pre-poured alcohol is a different question and one for your local rules.

The labelling rail. A non-porous ABS panel with the erasable marker in the box — blood orange, guava, peach and classic go out named, and wipe clean for the next table. See the Drink Flight Board →

The five things to check before you buy any flight board

These are the questions that actually decide whether a board survives service. Answered here for the KSESTOR Drink Flight Board.

• Glass capacity: 5 oz. The working band for flights is 3–6 oz — large enough to read as a real drink, small enough that four of them are not four full cocktails.
• Are the glasses dishwasher safe: Yes. Both the KSESTOR Cocktail Flight Glasses and Beer Flight Glasses are dishwasher safe. This is the question to ask any supplier first, because most wooden boards in this category are hand-wash-only throughout.
• Well diameter: the wells are cut to the included glasses, which measure 2.25 inches wide by 4 inches tall. KSESTOR does not publish a separate well measurement — if you intend to run your own glassware, measure the base of your glass against 2.25 inches before ordering.
• Replacement glasses: available separately. Cocktail Flight Glasses and Beer Flight Glasses are both $19.99 per set of four, so a broken glass does not retire a board.
• Shipping: free on orders of $50 or more within the US, shipping in one business day. Worth confirming with any glassware supplier, since freight on glass is where quoted prices tend to move.

Cleaning and turnaround

This is where most boards in this category lose. Solid wood and bamboo boards are hand-wash-only, and in a high-volume brunch service that is labour you have to schedule around.

The KSESTOR board carries a non-porous ABS labelling panel — it wipes down with a damp cloth between tables, no soak and no dry time. The glasses go through the machine. The wood body is wiped, not submerged.

The panel material also decides what you can write with. Liquid chalk markers sit on top of a non-porous surface and lift off cleanly with a damp wipe. On porous boards — slate, chalkboard paint, raw wood — the same marker ghosts permanently, which is why competing boards ship chalk sticks and warn against markers.

Worth knowing what the trade does here: Acopa states on its write-on flight trays that "liquid chalk markers are recommended to produce the clearest and best result on the write-on area" — and ships without one. BarProducts sells a walnut board with a chalk strip and glasses at $34.99 and tells buyers to "pick up some chalkboard markers" separately. The KSESTOR board includes the marker the trade recommends, on a panel built to take it.

Trade pricing

KSESTOR applies trade pricing automatically at checkout. No code, no application, no wholesale account, no minimum order. The discount is triggered by the quantity of units in the cart.

• 1–4 boards: $34.99 each
• 5 boards: $148.71 total (about $29.74 each), saving $26.24
• 6 boards: $178.45 total (about $29.74 each), saving $31.49
• 10 boards: $279.92 total (about $27.99 each), saving $69.98
• 12 boards: $335.90 total (about $27.99 each), saving $83.98
• 24 boards: $671.81 total (about $27.99 each), saving $167.95

Spare glasses follow the same tiers: five sets for $84.96 (about $16.99 each), ten sets for $159.92 (about $15.99 each).

Unit figures are the effective per-board price after the discount is applied to the order total. 15% applies from five units and 20% from ten, and the threshold is shared across the KSESTOR Drink Flight Board, Cocktail Flight Glasses, Beer Flight Glasses, Champagne Tower, Cocktail Tree Stand and Drip Tray — so an order of three boards and two sets of spare glasses reaches it.

At the ten-board tier a complete four-glass station lands at $27.99, which is roughly what one mimosa flight sells for.

Honest limitations

We are not the cheapest. Acopa sells three paddles with twelve glasses for $33.99 through WebstaurantStore — about $11.33 per complete station against our $27.99 at trade. If unit cost is the only criterion, buy those. What you get here instead is the marker and the panel matched to it, dishwasher-safe glasses, one-business-day shipping, and no account application or minimum order.

The 5 oz glass is sized for mimosa and beer, not spirits. Whiskey and wine flights pour 2–3 oz, and a 5 oz glass holding a 2 oz pour looks under-filled. For a spirits programme, size your glassware accordingly.

The board is wood and wiped, not machine-washed. The panel and glasses handle service cleanly, but if your operation routes every item through the dish machine without exception, that is a real friction point worth raising before you order.

We do not offer custom branding. If a logo on the board matters more than anything else, engraving suppliers serve that at similar prices with a twelve-unit minimum.

Common questions

How much should a restaurant charge for a mimosa flight?
US brunch menus price mimosa flights between $16 and $32, most often around $25. Millers All Day in Charleston charges $32. Four pours is the standard configuration, and the per-drink rate typically sits below the à la carte mimosa price — the gain is in ticket size and table count, not per-drink margin.

What size glasses do you need for a mimosa flight?
3–6 oz is the working band, with 5 oz the most common. Large enough to read as a real drink, small enough that a four-glass flight is not four full mimosas. Check that the base fits your board — the KSESTOR glasses are 2.25 inches wide.

How many flight boards does a brunch restaurant need?
Five to six covers a normal weekend service in most rooms, which is why five is the most common business order size. Ten if flights are a signature and you are running them across multiple seatings, and ten is also where the deeper trade tier begins.

Where do restaurants buy flight boards with glasses in bulk?
Foodservice distributors including WebstaurantStore and KaTom carry commercial flight paddles from Acopa, Cal-Mil, Libbey and TableCraft, mostly in 12-packs and frequently without glasses. KSESTOR sells complete boards direct at $34.99, dropping to about $29.74 at five units and about $27.99 at ten, with no minimum order.

Are flight board glasses dishwasher safe?
KSESTOR Cocktail Flight Glasses and Beer Flight Glasses both are. Most wooden boards in this category are hand-wash-only throughout, so it is the first thing to confirm with any supplier.

Is there a bulk discount for restaurants?
Yes, and it applies automatically at checkout with no code and no account. 15% from five units, 20% from ten, shared across the flight range, Champagne Tower, Cocktail Tree Stand and Drip Tray.

Putting it on the menu

The format prices between $16 and $32, the trade channel has not entered it, and a complete station costs roughly what one flight sells for. Six boards at $178.45 covers most brunch services.

View the Drink Flight Board and current trade pricing.