How Dines helped the Royal Highland Show deliver smoother, faster service and grow their revenues.
A reliable all-in-one POS and payments solution built for high-volume outdoor events and the teams who bring them to life.
The Challenge
Outdoor scale, surge crowds, fragile connectivity.
The Royal Highland Show is one of Scotland's biggest annual events. Held every June, it brings together food, farming and rural communities for four days of competitions, demonstrations and hospitality, with hundreds of thousands of visitors on site and hundreds of traders operating across a large outdoor venue. For an event of this scale, the team needed a payment system that could deliver fast ordering and seamless payments across every bar and trader. Speed, reliability and visibility were the headline challenges. Traditional card terminals struggle during peak periods, creating bottlenecks at the bars and putting extra pressure on staff. Managing multiple service points across the full showground made it difficult to track performance or react quickly. Outdoor setups required terminals that were stable, responsive and able to cope with unreliable internet, and with crowds arriving in surges from Edinburgh Airport next door, the team needed a setup that could deliver consistent service throughout the event. It became clear that the show needed a modern, resilient and easy-to-use system to support the full hospitality operation.
The Solution
A connected EPOS, payments and on-site team.
The Royal Highland Show partnered with Dines to bring stability, speed and simplicity to their service operation. Dines delivered a connected EPOS system for iPad, paired with mobile payment terminals and a single integrated payment solution designed for high-volume outdoor events. Onboarding was quick, with every bar equipped with intuitive devices that staff could learn in minutes thanks to Dines' on-site team. The focus was on giving teams confidence: fast load times, responsive ordering and reliable payments, even at the height of service or when there was no internet coverage. Event managers gained clearer oversight across the site, helping them monitor performance and stay ahead of demand. The setup allowed every F&B trader to run efficiently. Staff could move faster, queues stayed manageable and the overall flow across the showground became more predictable. Connectivity drops were inevitable, and Dines' offline mode meant the team never stopped selling.
“We were looking for better data and seamless transactions, and working with Dines has been brilliant. The team at Dines, in terms of planning, has been second to none.”
Mark Currie
Managing Director, Royal Highland Centre & Royal Highland Show
The Results
250k transactions, smoother flow, faster reconciliation.
With Dines in place, the Royal Highland Show saw a noticeable improvement in service speed and day-to-day operations across a weekend that processed over 250,000 transactions. Bars processed orders faster, queue lengths shrank and guests kept moving during the busiest periods. One trader was able to process upwards of 900 orders in a single hour. Dines gave the show full control over a 200,000-visitor, multi-trader operation. VIP vouchers and redeemables became a genuine revenue driver with clear tracking and effortless redemption: over 3,000 individual pre-paid tabs were used across the weekend. Post-event reconciliation, previously a long slog across dozens of traders with different settlement terms, was fully completed within seven days, including reconciling almost 400 individual revenue splits. Clean numbers, confident traders, and a team that could finally close the book on an event without it dragging into the next month. The show also significantly reduced losses from offline transactions thanks to Dines' industry-leading offline mode, hitting a 99% offline transaction success rate.
“Since coming on board with Dines, we're already seeing the returns. We previously had a low-risk model where we had pitch fees with the caterers and bars. We've made the transition to Dines and now we've gone with % margin on all the sites. It's been a really successful transition.”
Mark Currie
Managing Director, Royal Highland Centre & Royal Highland Show
What's Next
Building on a foundation that scales.
With a strong foundation now in place, the Royal Highland Show is well set for future growth. Dines will continue to support the team with insight, stability and improvements designed specifically for high-volume events. As expectations rise and the show evolves year on year, Dines continues to provide a POS and payment system built to support large-scale events with confidence.
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