Paul’s army career started in the Army cadets, 

then progressed through the Army Apprentice 

College ACC (Venning Platoon 3/82) to his first 

posting with 25 Engineer Regiment Osnabruck. 

His journey, with his guaranteed vacancy into the 

college, saw him grow not just in cookery skills, 

experience and knowledge but also in height, 

starting at 5'3"to when he made apprentice cor-

poral he was 6'1".

For Paul, throughout both his army and subse-

quent hotel management career, the idea that help 

also provides aspiration to achieve, is drawn from 

his own experiences as his quote makes clear. The 

ACC had more than its share of characters and 

hard task masters but always with the one intent 

to do the very best and help people succeed. Paul’s 

honour board of those that helped him most, could 

be replicated many times over throughout the his-

tory of the Corps by individuals at all ranks and 

roles, from Master Chefs, STI’s, Commanding 

Officers and fellow chefs. The key is learning from 

those great experiences that the Corps provided 

and to use that knowledge and skill in new roles 

and careers. Something that Paul has excelled at. 

A good example comes from Paul’s time as a 

CSOR with the GOC of 3rd Armoured Division 

in Soest. With a real commitment and focus on 

locally grown and sourced food, the majority of 

the events, dinners and family meals were from 

the ingredients, grown or reared on the 

property. This was long before the ‘5 Mile 

Seasonal Menus’ much in vogue today, yet 

that approach provided Paul with a culinary 

From Apprentice Chef to Independent Hotelier of the Year: Paul Bayliss MBE

“Those that helped me most were the ones most difficult to please or who 

had standards that always seem to be just out of reach…” 

Paul Bayliss MBE

education that was unique at the time and remains 

with him in his role as the General Manager of the 

Cardon Park Hotel. 

From BAOR to the Falkland Islands, York 

(where he was able to develop his competitive 

canoeing skills) back to BAOR and then Hong 

Kong just before the handover, were the prelude’s 

to Paul posting to the Army School of Catering as 

a technical instructor. Although only in that post 

for a year it did provide opportunity to go to the 

International Culinary Olympics where he was 

part of the winning World Cup team. What he 

also learned from that experience was the impor-

tance of service excellence and the importance of 

developing excellence through people, which is at 

the heart of the hospitality industry.

The latter part of Paul’s Army career was per-

haps the most frustrating. The army was shrinking 

in size yet deployments were increasing in number. 

Promotion opportunities were restricted and Paul 

was advised that he would be too old to be promoted 

to WO1 and have a chance of being commissioned. 

Not content with this he sought a review and was 

able to prove his case but when the commissioning 

letter arrived he had already received and accepted 

a job offer from one of the best food operations in 

the UK.

This was to run the in-house food service oper-

ation for AstraZeneca in the new state-of-the-art 

£12 million operation in Macclesfield. There was 

clearly no problems in establishing the necessary 

food standards, service or in 

Part of the team that won the world championships and three gold 
medals at the Berlin IKA 1995.

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