Dr. Enuf Turns Seventy

Many have claimed this Johnson City drink is the answer for “untold misery.” 

In 1950, Mrs. Dan Smith of Elizabethton, Tennessee, started taking injections for a stomach ailment. But her discomfort continued into the summer of 1951. She decided to buy a carton of Dr. Enuf, a lemon-lime drink that had been introduced to East Tennessee by Johnson City’s Tri-City Beverage Company in 1949.

Mrs. Smith’s relief was immediate. At one of the stores where she had purchased Dr. Enuf, she found a printed form. On the upper left was a photograph of a man named Charles Gordon, and on the right, a drawing of character in a dress jacket and bow tie bearing a glowing smile.

“Use as much of the space below as you like to tell the full story of your new health, that wonderful DR. ENUF feeling!” the form instructed.

Mrs. Smith took the form home, rolled it into her typewriter, and told her story.

“I could not eat meat, tomatoes and other foods because they kept my stomach upset and gave me a nervous feeling—so now since taking Dr. Enuf, I can eat anything without any ill effects. My nervous condition has vanished,” she reported on September 26, 1951.

Charles Gordon had driven over to Kingsport to have those forms printed by Howard-Duckett Company, and he left them at every store where his new product was being sold. It was one of many marketing schemes he devised over the years to convince consumers that his new product would cure just about anything.

The form outlined various reasons for “taking” Dr. Enuf: kidney slow-down, stomach disturbances, nervous, run-down condition, a feeling of growing older, and “because you lack essential vitamins.” 

A minister in Chuckey, Tennessee, picked up one of those forms, too. By the time he had consumed his second bottle of Dr. Enuf, he was moved to write, “I feel much better, am sleeping sounder and can eat three big meals and with plenty of renewed energy to do my work.”

Dr. Enuf turns 70 this year, and Tri-City Beverage, now run by Charles Gordon’s son Chuck, promotes it as America’s first energy drink, “the original energy booster.”

Dr. Enuf is often called a soft drink today, but quenching thirst was not its original, primary purpose at all.

Bill Swartz, a University of Chicago chemistry graduate, developed the formula, loading it with thiamine, niacin, and caffeine, in the hope that it would help his co-workers overcome their lethargy. Already in business selling a soft drink called Tip, Charles Gordon bought the rights to Dr. Enuf from Swartz.

“Bill Swartz created the drink to replenish the nutrients the body exhausts in a hard day’s work,” says Chuck Gordon. “From the beginning, it was sold as a dietary supplement, a tonic, something to re-energize you. It wasn’t sold or marketed as a soft drink.”

The therapeutic claims that have been made about Dr. Enuf over the years echo patent medicine promotions of the late 19th century, with one significant difference: Dr. Enuf contains no alcohol.

Wanda Braswell, Tri-City Beverage’s Senior Vice President for Administration, Finance, and Quality Assurance, tells me about a South Carolina family that drives to Johnson City regularly to buy Dr. Enuf, since they swear it’s the only thing that will cure their mother’s urinary tract infections.

Some Dr. Enuf devotees say the drink eases arthritis, settles a “sour stomach,” and makes chemotherapy more bearable. Charles Gordon’s widow, Evelyn, now 97, expects her son Chuck to bring her a bottle every afternoon.

In an unsigned testimonial from the early 1950s, one woman claimed that Dr. Enuf helped her go from 86 to 100 pounds. “I can truly say that Dr. Enuf has helped me more than any medicine I have ever taken,” she wrote. “I can recommend Dr. Enuf as being the best tonic on earth for any one who is weak, nervous and has no appetite. Dr. Enuf will really give you new life.” 

Part of the Tri-City Beverage story is the fact that the company was the first franchiser of Mountain Dew and the first to put the drink in commercial bottles. The Mountain Dew brand and production rights were purchased by the Pepsi-Cola company in 1964, but Dr. Enuf remains a Gordon family product.

A native of Marion, Virginia, Charles Gordon piloted gliders during World War II.  Shortly after returning to the States when his military service was over, he established the Tip Bottling Company, and around 1948, he changed the name to Tri-City Beverage.

Gordon’s experience in the military had a direct bearing on his drink business, which he operated out of Quonset huts.

“I was sold on using Quonsets after being housed in them in England during the war,” Gordon wrote in his memoir. He pointed out that a Quonset hut could be constructed in about 300 hours, and the lack of columns made moving products around in them much easier. One of the original Quonset huts still stands on Johnson City’s West Walnut Street, and another sits behind the Tri-City Beverage plant on the city’s south side.

Charles Gordon’s impact on the region was profound. Not only did he produce drinks, he also ran a furniture manufacturing business, opened the first boat and motor dealership in the area, and even owned citrus groves in Florida. In between, he found time to serve as Johnson City’s mayor.

His entrepreneurial wisdom still guides Tri-City Beverage today. He insisted that Dr. Enuf be made with pure cane sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup. And he always bottled in glass.

“Glass preserves the best flavor,” says his son Chuck. “The carbonation stays in the glass bottle. The shelf life of a drink in a plastic bottle is only about 90 days. A drink in glass, well-capped, can last for a year or two.”

In the bottling industry, there aren’t many glass lines left. Tri-City Beverage capitalizes on that scarcity by doing glass bottling for other companies around the country, such as         Salisbury, North Carolina’s Cheerwine, a cherry-flavored drink that dates to 1917.

Early in the history of Dr. Enuf, those glass bottles held seven ounces. “Most soft drinks then were 10-ounce,” says Chuck. “Dr. Enuf was sold in four packs for 98 cents. That’s about 25 cents a bottle, at a time when most soft drinks sold for a nickel.”

The higher price convinced consumers they were getting something extra. And, like the name Dr. Enuf implies, many believed that if they drank the product regularly, their dependence on medical science would be reduced. Gordon says an early image the company used was a little doctor in a derby hat with a black bag.

Legendary in the annals of advertising in the Tri-Cities was Charles Gordon’s idea to purchase full-page ads on the back pages of the area’s newspapers and to have those ads designed to resemble news stories. Gordon paid paperboys to fold the newspapers backwards to make it look as if Dr. Enuf had garnered front-page coverage.

“Everyone thought those were the headlines of the paper that day,” recalls Chuck Gordon. 

“It’s probably the best advertising campaign I’ve ever seen in all my years in Johnson City,” adds Scott Lusk, a local draftsman who collects Tri-City Beverage memorabilia.

A sugar-free version of Dr. Enuf debuted in 1998. In 2002, a cherry-flavored herbal variety was introduced, containing ginseng, in addition to guarana, derived from a South American shrub.

Wanda Braswell started working for the Gordon family as a switchboard operator and shipping clerk at the furniture plant in 1977.

“It’s almost like having celebrity status when people find out I work for Dr. Enuf,” she says. “They’ll call me ‘Dr. Wanda.’ Tri-City Beverage and Dr. Enuf are more than a business. They’re a legacy.”

About the author: Fred Sauceman is the author of the book The Proffitts of Ridgewood: An Appalachian Family’s Life in Barbecue.