Former IHOP Waitress Now Runs Company

N E W  Y O R K, Jan. 7 -- When Julia Stewart was a 16-year-old waitress at the International House of Pancakes, she used to take orders. Now she dishes them out.

She is the new president and chief operating officer of IHOP. It has been quite a journey from refilling cups of coffee and flavored syrup jars to winning the 1999 Woman of the Year Award in the food service industry, but Stewart puts it in simple terms.

"I am living the American dream," Stewart said on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "I think I always knew I wanted to run a company. I don't know ifspecifically at the time it was International House of Pancakes, but I always had a dream to run a restaurant company."

As the head of the 1,001-unit chain,the 46-year-old executive will be in elite company. Only 6.2 percent of the top 2,662 executive jobs in the country belong to women.

Stewart's dream started 30 years ago when she was a teenage IHOP customer, growing up in California. Fascinated by how the waitresses managed to take so many orders and keep them all straight, Stewart took a waitressing job at an IHOP in San Diego at age 16. Right away, she loved the instant feedback from customers that let her know whether she had done her job well or not. A love of the food business got into her blood and never left.

The McDonald's Masher

As a senior at San Diego State University, Stewart invented a gadget that helped jump-start her career. For her senior project in her advanced marketing class, she had to come up with a device associated with McDonald's that would cost less than $40.

Her idea: the "McDonald's masher," a tool that mashes out hamburger patties in the shape of the Golden Arches. It won the class prize, and because it was a slow news day, a local TV station picked up the story of her invention. A man who saw the TV spot offered Stewart a job running his in-house advertising, and her career was off and running.

Stewart still has the masher, buried somewhere among boxes in her basement. Despite her husband's protests, she has carried it with them on each of their 14 moves.