Dines for Theatres
15 minutes.
That's your interval.
Your interval is your biggest revenue window, and everything in your system needs to be optimised for it. Dines gives you a fast, modern POS, pre-ordering from seats, reliable payments, and the tools to make every minute count.
Dines is a hospitality POS platform designed for theatres, arts venues, and entertainment spaces where revenue depends on maximising 15-minute interval windows. The system enables pre-ordering from seats via QR code (no app download), fast bar mode for high-speed counter service, and real-time kitchen routing to ensure orders are ready the moment the curtain falls. Trusted by Delfont Mackintosh Theatres, Camden Roundhouse, Chichester Festival Theatre, and King's Lynn Corn Exchange. Camden Roundhouse saw a 57% increase in orders per hour at peak after switching to Dines. The platform achieves 97.3% offline sales capture with offline-first payments (97.4% offline capture rate). Staff training takes under 25 minutes. Support averages under 60 seconds response time from a UK-based team.
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Can your audience pre-order drinks from their seat before the interval?
Trusted by leading theatres and venues
Tilly AI for Theatres
AI that knows your interval matters.
Forecast demand per show. Pull interval performance reports. Prep stock levels automatically. Tilly works around your schedule.
Discover Tilly AI➜Ask a question in natural language with your voice or type it in, and Tilly will respond.
Minutes
The interval problem
Your biggest revenue window is also your shortest.
Theatregoers have 15 minutes between acts. Most of that is spent queuing. Every second in line is a sale you’ll never recover. The problem isn’t demand, it’s throughput.
The solution
Order before the curtain falls. Collect in seconds.
Dines lets audience members browse and pay from their seats before the interval even begins. When the lights come up, their order is ready. No queue. No wait. More sales.
Throughput increase at Camden Roundhouse
Beyond the interval.
Lobby & Interval Bars
Mobile & Kiosk Ordering
Merchandise & Hospitality
Built for old buildings
Wi-Fi dead spots? Keep selling.
Theatres are often built in historic, thick-walled buildings where Wi-Fi coverage is inconsistent. Auditoriums, foyers, and upper bars all have their own connectivity challenges. Dines fails over from Wi-Fi to eSIM automatically, and if both drop, offline mode kicks in within nine seconds. Every sale is captured and syncs the moment connectivity returns.
- Automatic Wi-Fi → eSIM failover, no manual switch
- Offline mode keeps tills trading in auditoriums and upper bars
- 97.4% offline transaction capture rate
Loyalty and gifting
Reward regulars. Simplify producer accounts.
Use redeemables to reward your most loyal patrons, manage producer and cast accounts, and run member-exclusive offers. One QR code covers gift vouchers, complimentary drinks, interval packages, and corporate hospitality credits, all tracked and reconciled automatically.
- Gift vouchers and interval drinks packages
- Producer and cast complimentary accounts
- Member loyalty and VIP corporate credits
QR code
Gift vouchers, producer accounts, member loyalty, and corporate hospitality. All from the same scan.
Proof from your world
See what operators with similar challenges think about Dines.
Corrina Wilson
Head of Finance, Caper & Berry, caterers at Chichester Festival Theatre
It's a slick system; it modernises the business. The way the system can revert to offline mode is really helpful. We used to have awful issues with wired systems, and that just doesn't happen anymore. The speed of service is really good; we do the transactions headache-free. In The Brasserie, serving 200 covers in an hour and a half for three courses is no mean feat for the people and the systems. You can tell the system has been developed and maintained by people who have used poor systems in the past and wanted to fix those issues. It's a slick system; it modernises the business.
A day in the life
Same showtime. Two very different intervals.
A theatre or live venue operator's day, doors-open to curtain-down. On the left, every minute lost to gut-feel stocking, frozen card machines and post-show reconciliation. On the right, all of that handled for you.
Without Dines
of show day spent on stock-by-memory, interval chaos, pin-enter disputes and end-of-show paperwork.
With Dines
of admin with Dines. The interval rush serves +57% more guests. Curtain on time.
Two hours of stock-by-memory.
Recount cocktail ingredients by hand. Double-check tonight's stock based on what you can remember about the last run of this show. You'll overorder on half of it and run short on the rest. New agency staff arrive and immediately struggle with a clunky legacy till.
Last-time data and tonight's stock ready. Staff trained in 25 minutes.
Pull last-run interval data from the last time this show was in house. Order the exact stock you need. Train new agency staff on the intuitive iOS POS in around twenty-five minutes. No babysitting through service.
Twenty minutes of pre-show queue, and half the bar leaves thirsty.
The pre-show crowd arrives in a wave. Card terminals struggle under load, and the queue at the stalls bar stretches back to the foyer. Two staff break off to take cash to clear the backlog. Half the audience gives up and heads to their seats thirsty.
Tap-to-pay clears the foyer in eight.
Dines contactless terminals and roaming staff clear the foyer queue before the second bell. Pre-orders attached to seat numbers are pulled in a tap. Every guest holds a drink for curtain up.
Ten minutes comping bottles you've already been paid for.
A patron pre-ordered champagne for the interval at booking, but the bar has no record of it. They argue at the counter while act two starts. You comp the bottles and make a mental note to have words with the box office team tomorrow.
Pre-order on the bar by seat number, before they reach it.
Guests pre-order online from their seats. Box office, bar and the Dines venue POS system are fully connected. Each pre-order is labelled with a seat number on the bar's screen. The champagne is poured before they reach the counter.
The interval is fifteen minutes long, and the Wi-Fi drops halfway through.
Fifteen to eighteen minutes to sell as much as you can. Traditional card machines freeze under the volume. Wi-Fi drops in basement bars and thick-walled sections of the historic building. Payments fail. Staff stand exposed. Guests walk away.
+57% throughput with 9-second failover. 97.4% capture.
Every terminal on handheld mode. When the heritage building's Wi-Fi inevitably drops, the Dines EPOS for theatres executes an automatic offline failover in just 9 seconds. Payments keep going at a 97.4% capture rate. Peak-time throughput climbs 57%.
Forty minutes on hold. The show is not waiting.
Front-of-house printer goes down right before the second interval. Helpdesk is on weekend cover. Forty minute wait. The duty manager handwrites tickets. Reconciliation tomorrow will be its own production.
A real hospitality expert in sixty seconds. Fixed in about five.
Dines support answers in under a minute, 24/7, 365 days a year. The engineer remote-diagnoses a combi terminal's fault before the second interval rush. Average solution time: around five minutes.
Two bars, a merch counter, and one tired manager.
Complete end-of-show reporting across every bar and merchandise counter by hand. Match Z-reads to card takings. Track down a £48 variance that turns out to be a voided sale nobody logged. Email the GM. Bed at 00:30. Curtain up at 14:00 tomorrow.
One live view of the whole building, cashed up in five.
The Dines hospitality EPOS gives an instant single view of every bar, merchandise stand and till. Reconciliation is automatic. The end-of-show pack is in the GM's inbox while you're locking the stage door. You leave the building by midnight.
Go deeper
See what Dines can do for your theatre.
The Interval Revenue Guide
How leading theatres are doubling interval revenue with pre-ordering, faster service, and smarter stock management.
Report coming soonTry Mobile Pre-Ordering
Experience the customer journey: scan from your seat, order drinks, collect at the bar with zero queuing. See how pre-ordering works.
Demo coming soonMeet Tilly AI
Ask Tilly to prep stock for tonight's show, pull interval reports, or review historical sales data. AI that understands theatre operations.
Meet TillySee Dines in a theatre.
Delfont Mackintosh Theatres
The platform
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Frequently asked questions.
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