Jennifer Mann's story on IHOP CEO Julia Stewart in The Kansas City Star looks into pher past as president of Applebee's International, which is the Glendale pancake house chain is looking to pick up for $2.1 billion.

In 2001, Julia Stewart left Applebee’s International after three years as president when it became clear she was being passed over as the eventual chief executive officer.

Stewart moved on and in 2002 became the CEO at IHOP Corp., then a tired and flat pancake chain. She and management, in her words, reinvigorated the business by selling most of the company-owned stores to franchisees and updating the restaurants, menu, uniforms and marketing.

Now, with IHOP’s pending $2.1 billion acquisition of Applebee’s, she appears poised to assume the role she initially missed at Applebee’s — running the company. She believes applying a similar recipe to Applebee’s can return the company to growth.

“A strong point of difference — that’s what Applebee’s desperately needs because we all fall into the ‘look like everybody else, act like everybody else,’ ” Stewart said. “I don’t think anybody in casual dining is setting the world on fire, and it was the same situation when I came to IHOP … but we distinguished ourselves in the (family dining) category, and I don’t view the challenge any differently at Applebee’s.”

The fix may be a bit more complicated. IHOP’s revenue is a third the size of Applebee’s, which is the country’s largest casual dining chain. Stewart intends to finance the $25.50-a-share acquisition and turnaround by selling Applebee’s 508 company-owned restaurants and using a sophisticated debt transaction paid off by future franchise revenues for the two operations.