Unhappy over Cheesecake Factory Inc.’s stock performance and “profitless prosperity,” Robert Olstein, chairman of Olstein Capital Management LP, and an investor in the restaurant chain, called for the company’s founder and chief executive to step down.

Olstein said in a letter to Cheesecake’s directors late Thursday that the company “requires a proven, professional management team which can balance orderly growth with consistent improvement in operations, profitability and ultimately shareholder value.”

He asked that the board remove David Overton as CEO and split his current roles as chairman and chief executive. Overton founded the chain in 1978 and has run it ever since.

“I don’t want to run the company, I just want investors to get what they should,” Olstein said in an interview.

Olstein’s firm controls about 1.3 million shares, or about 2 percent, of the Calabasas-based chain and has been invested in the company since July, 2006, he said.

“This is the third letter we have written over the past year and a half,” Olstein said. “We’re not hostile activists. We love this company and we’re in awe of what Mr. Overton has done. We just think the company has outgrown him.”

Olstein announced his plans to write the letter on national TV Dec. 14, three days later, activist investor Nelson Peltz said he bought a 14 percent stake in the company.

Olstein contended that the company’s 139 namesake restaurants could significantly increase returns to shareholders by charging more for food and, perhaps, trimming portion sizes.

A Cheesecake Factory spokeswoman declined to comment.

Shares in Cheesecake Factory dipped 2.4 percent to $23.53 in afternoon trading Friday on the Nasdaq.