Ex-Applebee’s exec was told she’d never be CEO—she bought the chain and fired her naysayer: ‘We don’t need two of us, so I’m gonna have to let you go’
Julia Stewart, a former Applebee's executive, faced rejection when she was denied the CEO position despite her success in turning the company around. After purchasing Applebee's for over $2 billion, she informed her former boss of the leadership change, highlighting her triumph over naysayers. Stewart's story is one of resilience and determination in the face of skepticism from the industry.
- ▪Julia Stewart was president of Applebee's and helped the company achieve significant growth.
- ▪Despite her success, she was told by the CEO that she would never become CEO.
- ▪Stewart later acquired Applebee's for $2.1 to $2.3 billion and informed her former boss of the leadership change.
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| Original publisher | Fortune |
| Canonical URL | https://fortune.com/article/ex-applebees-exec-julia-stewart-told-never-be-ceo-bought-the-chain-fired-naysayer/ |
| Publication time | Sat, 30 May 2026 15:42:56 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-30T16:09:38.763Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-30T16:09:38.763Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | nDH6BBqw1DeH |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Many professionals will encounter naysayers who believe they can’t achieve their ambitious goals, whether that be bad bosses, skeptical investors, or doubtful professors. But Julia Stewart—a serial executive who has led operations across various billion-dollar American casual dining chains—had a gratifying career moment after being snubbed for CEO. Recommended Video It was 1998, and Stewart was serving as president of Applebee’s after a seven-year stint as Taco Bell’s national senior VP of franchise operations. The restaurant chain was struggling and needed an industry powerhouse to help turn things around. So Applebee’s leader presented a game-plan to Stewart: Get the struggling company back on track, and she will have proven herself enough to take the coveted chief executive role.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Fortune.
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