A proposal for venue owners & operators · Presented by Walk the Beat · Powered by RezConnect.store
Sunday is your quietest room. Let's make it sing.
The Sunday Gig is a weekly Sunday-afternoon live music event for restaurants, bars, and clubs that already have the room, the staff, and the kitchen — but not the crowd. We bring the bands, the promotion, and the management. You open the doors, work your room, and keep every dollar of food and beverage.
See how the deal works Start with one Sunday
The slow Sunday
You already pay for the room. Sunday just doesn't pay you back.
The lights are on, the staff is clocked in, and the slowest shift of the week eats the margin the weekend made.
Most venues in town have the same hole in the week. There's no Sunday gig — no standing reason for people to come out on a Sunday afternoon, sit down, order, and stay a while. So the room sits quiet, or doesn't open at all, and the fixed costs run either way.
The Sunday Gig fills that hole with the one thing that reliably moves people on a Sunday afternoon: live music, a seated audience, and a cause worth showing up for.
The concept
A standing Sunday date between your room and the local music scene.
Walk the Beat already puts dozens of bands into dozens of venues every August — one big festival afternoon, 1 to 5 PM, all over town. The Sunday Gig takes that same energy and gives it a weekly home: a selected band, playing its best material, for a seated audience in a room that's already built for it — yours.
- A real show, not background music — bands are selected and scheduled through Walk the Beat, and they play to people who came to listen.
- A fundraiser at the door — we work the door and collect for the Walk the Beat mission, the way the festival does. Your till is your till.
- A weekly habit — same day, same window, building a Sunday crowd your venue owns week after week.
- Promotion that runs itself — campaigns, registration, and reminders run on the RezConnect platform, not on sticky notes.
How the afternoon runs
One Sunday, start to finish.
A sample run-of-show in the festival's proven 1–5 PM window. Times flex to your kitchen, your license, and your regulars — this is the shape, agreed with you before the first date.
Load-in & line check
The band arrives, sets up in the corner or stage you've designated, and sound-checks before a single guest walks in.
Doors
Your staff opens as usual. Our door team greets guests, collects for the fundraiser, and points everyone to a seat and a menu.
First set
The band plays its best. Guests settle in, order, and stay — a seated audience is a dining audience.
Halftime spotlight
A short break: the mission moment, next week's band announced, your specials and upcoming nights on the mic.
Second set
The band closes strong. Second rounds, desserts, and the guests who came for "just one set" are still in their seats.
Close & count
Band loads out, door count is reconciled with you on the spot, and notes go into the playbook for next Sunday.
Who does what · Who keeps what
The simplest deal in the business.
We're not asking you to build anything, buy anything, or learn a new trade. You run the business you already run. We connect the bands and manage the event around it.
Your venue does what it already does
- Open the doors and staff the room — your people, your schedule
- Serve your food and your drinks, at your prices
- Keep every dollar of food and beverage sales
- Give the event a home: a corner, a stage, a patio — your call
Walk the Beat & RezConnect bring the rest
- Select, book, and schedule the bands
- Promote the date — campaigns, social, and the band's own following
- Work the door and collect the fundraiser
- Manage the flow of the afternoon — run-of-show, halftime, close-out
- Register guests and follow up, so this Sunday's crowd hears about next Sunday
The door is the fundraiser
Guests come in through a Walk the Beat door — a donation or cover collected by our team for the mission that keeps local music and student pathways moving. It never touches your registers, and it's reconciled with you the same day.
The room is your revenue
Every plate, pour, and second round during the event is yours, exactly as it would be any other service — except this time the seats are full on a Sunday afternoon. The risk you take is the one you already take: opening your doors. We make sure somebody walks through them.
The platform behind the event
Why sponsors run on RezConnect — $97 a month, in the open.
A Sunday crowd is only worth building if you can reach it again. The RezConnect platform is the engine under the event: registration pages, QR check-in, campaign emails and texts, reminders, and follow-up — all on one system, carried by coached student affiliates.
What the platform does for your Sundays
- Event funnels from our library — registration and RSVP pages built from existing, proven funnels, not from scratch
- Campaigns that fill seats — announcement, reminder, and "bring a friend" campaigns chosen from the library and scheduled for you
- Guests become your list — every registration is captured in your account, so the audience compounds
- Follow-up on autopilot — thank-yous, next-date invites, and offers go out after every event
- Year-round, not one night — the same system runs your other promotions, slow nights, and special events
The annual saves $167 against paying monthly — and it's the whole split, on the page, the way we'll put it in writing.
Pick your package
Three ways in. Start where you're comfortable.
Tap a package to see what it means in practice. Every level includes the Sunday Gig itself — the packages are about how much of the machinery you want running behind it.
The Sunday Gig — the event itself
You host; we produce. Walk the Beat selects and schedules the band, promotes the date, works the door for the fundraiser, and manages the afternoon's flow. You open, staff, and serve — and keep all food and beverage revenue. It's the fastest way to see what a Sunday crowd looks like in your room, and the pilot for everything else.
The manager's playbook
Guides your team can actually run from.
The full package includes a working playbook — the same managed suggestions and procedures we'd hand a venue manager on day one. Open a guide to see what's inside. These are starter guides on purpose: we run your first event together, answer the questions your room raises, and fill the gaps with you. After that, the playbook is yours.
The afternoon on one page, so anyone on your team can run it:
- Load-in, sound-check, doors, set times, halftime, close
- Who calls each moment — band liaison, door lead, floor manager
- What to do when a set runs long or a band runs late
How the Walk the Beat door works alongside your registers:
- Greeting script, donation/cover collection, and wristbands or stamps
- QR registration at the door for guests who didn't sign up ahead
- Same-day count and reconciliation, signed off with your manager
Sunday service runs differently from a Friday rush:
- Suggested staffing shape for a seated, listening audience
- Menu notes — what moves during a set, what to feature at halftime
- Keeping service smooth without competing with the music
Everything the band needs, settled before the day:
- Stage or corner setup, power, and load-in path
- Set length, break timing, and volume expectations for the room
- Band terms in writing before the date — no surprises either way
The campaign rhythm that fills the room, drawn from the RezConnect library:
- Announcement post and email when the date is set
- Midweek reminder and a "table for four" nudge
- Day-of reminder, then the thank-you and next-Sunday invite
Fifteen minutes after close that makes every next Sunday better:
- Door count, turnout notes, and what the room did during each set
- What guests asked for that you didn't have — yet
- One fix and one keep for next week, written into the playbook
On student help: if a student affiliate works on your build or your event, they're paid hourly for that work — student services run $50–$100 an hour under a written scope, agreed before anyone starts. The coaching is the point of the program; fair pay is part of it.
From one Sunday to every Sunday
Your first event builds the template. The template builds the service.
We don't pretend the playbook is finished — it's built the honest way, in a real room, with a real operator. Here's how a pilot becomes a standing Sunday.
Pick a pilot Sunday
One date, one band, your normal staff. Low stakes, real answers.
Run it together
Our team manages the event with yours, guides in hand, gaps noted as they show up.
Fill the gaps
The after-action review turns your room's real questions into written procedure.
Lock the template
Your Sunday becomes a repeatable template — set times, campaigns, staffing, all of it.
It joins the library
Refined SOPs go into the RezConnect workhorse, making the next venue's onboarding faster — and yours easier to hand to a new manager.
Who's behind it
Operators and musicians, not marketers.
Walk the Beat
Grand Haven's live-music mission: founded and created by Dave Palmer, carried forward by president Becky Newman and the team, with his blessing. Every August it fills venues across town with bands and seated, listening crowds — and the $7 mission share from every RezConnect sponsor flows to it.
Michael Rutherford — your producer
The Sunday Gig is run by someone who has stood where you're standing: club manager, restaurant manager, and director of operations for multiple restaurants and nightclubs, coming up through the business from the floor. He knows what a slow Sunday costs because he's paid for a few. Today he runs secondchancepathways.com dba rezconnect.store — the platform, the student affiliate program, and the event package on this page.
Owner questions
Asked at the bar, answered straight.
Hosting a pilot Sunday Gig costs you the service you'd run anyway — your doors, your staff, your room. There's no venue fee for the event itself. If you take the platform — which is what makes the promotion and follow-up run — it's $97 a month or $997 a year, split in the open above. Build-out help beyond that is hourly or by trade, scoped in writing first.
We do. The Walk the Beat door team collects the fundraiser donation or cover, keeps it entirely separate from your registers, and reconciles the count with your manager the same day. Your food and beverage money never leaves your hands.
Then you already know the hard part isn't the band — it's the crowd, the promotion, the registration, and doing it every week without burning out your manager. The Sunday Gig brings Walk the Beat's roster and following, a managed run-of-show, and the campaign machinery behind it. And it ties your room into a town-wide music mission your guests already know from the August festival.
That's exactly why we start with a pilot, not a contract. One Sunday tells us what your room needs — a different band style, a different start time, a stronger campaign. The after-action review turns that into fixes, and the template improves every week. A weekly habit builds; the first date is the foundation, not the verdict.
RezConnect is carried by student affiliates learning real business — promotion, guest registration, event support — coached by operators. If a student works on your build or your event, you pay them hourly for that work ($50–$100 an hour, in a written scope). Your venue gets trained help; a local student gets a real pathway. That trade is the heart of Second Chance Pathways.
Yes — that's the design. Pick one Sunday. We bring a band, run the door, and manage the afternoon. You watch your room fill on your slowest day, read the playbook, and then decide about the platform and the standing series with real numbers in front of you.
The cause at the door
The door is a fundraiser — and the cause has a name.
Walk the Beat — founded by Dave Palmer, carried forward by its president, Becky Newman — supports public school music programs through the Spread the Music Foundation Fund. Every Sunday door works for that mission. A Sunday crowd isn't just a crowd; it's a room full of people funding the next generation of musicians.
A night for your cause
The pattern is open to the community's nonprofits and clubs. A nonprofit can be the beneficiary of a Sunday: the venue hosts, the band plays, and the door raises money for their cause. That's how nonprofits participate — not as sponsors on a banner, but as the reason the room filled.
The First Step
Needs Assessment
Create your Path Plan. This is it — let's start it. A few questions about your business — the kind only you can answer. Answer them now, at your own pace — or we'll walk them together, your call. Either way, your answers become your Path Plan, and our Path Panel goes to work on them — so when we sit down, we're not starting from zero. We're starting from YOUR words.
Start My Path PlanThe Coaching Behind the Pathway
The pathway runs on a coached method. Michael was trained in Miller Heiman and The One Minute Manager — and every student on the pathway is coached the same way: clear one-page goals, praise the moment they get it right, and redirect without tearing down.
“Many times people fail because they are not coached.”
Read Michael's MethodStart with one Sunday
Pick a date. We'll bring the band.
One conversation, one walk through your room, and one pilot Sunday. We'll talk through the band, the door, and the run-of-show — and you'll see the whole package working in your own venue before you decide anything.