Community Highlights: Meet Larry Weintraub of Beckett’s

Today we’d like to introduce you to Larry Weintraub.

Hi Larry, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My entrepreneurial passion began early. I grew up on the westside of Los Angeles and started hustling for odd jobs at 13 years old. When I got to high school, I spotted that my friends were famished before first period, so I bought a few dozen bagels and sold them out every morning until the school administrators banned the selling of outside food.

From there I turned to promoting concerts and managing bands. I had a tremendous passion for music but couldn’t play an instrument so I focused on the business side of the music industry. In college at the University of California, San Diego, I studied Economics but spent most of my time on every music-related opportunity available—promoting concerts, running a record store, managing bands, working at the college radio station, and serving as the newspaper’s music editor.

My college experiences combined with summer internships led me to A&M Records, where I spent nearly a decade leading the artist development department and later adding A&R responsibilities. I had the privilege of working with exceptional talents like Sheryl Crow, Gin Blossoms, Soundgarden, Blue Traveler, Sting, MxPx, and countless others. Simultaneously, I was a partner in a management company that shepherded the careers of Korn, Offspring, Social Distortion, and later Taking Back Sunday.

After A&M, I co-founded Fanscape, one of the first social media marketing companies. We initially worked with every major record label, movie studio, television network, and concert promoter in the US before pivoting to serve Fortune 500 brands including Samsung, AT&T, GameStop, and State Farm. Fanscape was acquired by Omnicom, one of the world’s largest advertising companies, where I spent another decade leading marketing innovation strategy and music entertainment partnerships.

Throughout my career, I’ve built a track record of identifying emerging trends early—from recognizing musicians with mainstream potential to pioneering social media marketing when platforms were still nascent. Whether breaking new artists or building innovative marketing campaigns for major brands, I’ve focused on connecting products with their ideal audiences. This expertise in brand building, marketing, and understanding consumer behavior naturally led me to my current role leading Beckett’s, a non-alcoholic beverage company that creates premium versions of classic cocktails and spirits like Margaritas, Moscow Mules, Palomas, and Gin & Tonics. Applying the same strategic approach I used in music and marketing, we’ve become the #1 seller at Total Wine, the largest liquor store chain in the country, and are rapidly expanding our distribution across the US.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, it has not been a smooth road. But if I step back and look at my career, I see the connecting thread. I have been early many times in my life and have needed a lot of patience and tenacity. For example, with music, I met Korn long before their music was commercially viable but I saw that when they played, kids went crazy. Every record label passed on them until one guy saw what I saw. We had to fund our own recordings and spend every penny we earned to keep going until they eventually crossed over to an audience beyond their hometown friends.

At Fanscape we were so early in using the Internet as a marketing vehicle that it took years until people understood why they needed our services. Today everyone knows what an influencer is or the power of a social network like Instagram, but in the beginning these things didn’t exist. We did things like harnessing the passion of music fans to elevate their favorite artists by promoting them on chat boards and physically holding up posters outside of MTV’s TRL studio in New York City. It was only when bands “mysteriously” started selling music, t-shirts and concert tickets through direct fan communication that everyone took notice.

At Beckett’s we’re at the forefront of a new beverage category. People are drinking less and turning to healthier alternatives. but convincing grocery chains and liquor stores to make room for adult non-alcoholic alternatives is a slow process.

Like everything in my career, it’s about persistence and staying as lean and nimble as possible until the pieces start coming together.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Beckett’s is a best-selling brand of non-alcoholic cocktails and spirits. We’re based in Los Angeles, make great tasting adult beverages that are low in calories and sugar, and give you the ability to party with your friends but not feel bad the next day.

We’re a very lean company. I’m the CEO but wear many hats that include product innovation, supply chain coordination, operations, marketing, and sales.

There are a lot of good products out there so we don’t disparage the competition, we just concentrate on making the best tasting and affordable beverages and making sure our customers feel seen and heard by us.

I’m very proud of our tagline, Too Good To Be Wasted. It obviously is a fun play on words but it summarizes how we feel about our customers and our products.

What matters most to you?
If you trace my life back to the beginning, you’ll see a consistency. Whether it was satisfying the hunger of my friends in high school, helping introduce the world to great new bands, or showing that you can still go out and have a blast without the hangover, I just want to make sure people get introduced to things that make their lives better.

This matters to me because that’s what I would hope someone would do for me. It could be introducing me to a musician I’d never heard before or offering me something to taste that becomes a new mainstay. I’ve been blessed to have this happen to me on countless occasions, so it’s an even bigger thrill to do that for others.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.drinkbecketts.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drinkbecketts/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/drinkbecketts/

Image Credits
The last one is of me and my son and the band MxPx. The photograph was taken by Matty Vogel. @MattyVogel .
Please credit him if you can. I asked him for permission to use.

https://www.instagram.com/mattyvogel/
https://www.mattyvogel.com/