Der Alltag einer Familie mit 19 Kindern

What does “palettenweise” mean in German?

The video explains how a family with 19 kids feeds everyone. They skip normal supermarkets and shop at wholesale stores, where “kauft man Essen direkt palettenweise” — you buy food straight by the pallet. A pallet is the big wooden platform a forklift moves with stacked boxes on top, so “palettenweise” means buying in huge batches. Not one box, but whole loads at once — to save money buying in bulk.

Spoken line: “Dort kauft man Essen direkt palettenweise” — “There you buy food straight by the pallet.” “-weise” works the same way in a handful of everyday words you will hear in German: - “Sie kauft Wasser kistenweise.” — She buys water by the crate. - “Wir verkaufen die Äpfel kiloweise.” — We sell the apples by the kilo. - “Er gibt das Geld haufenweise aus.” — He spends money in heaps (loads of it). In each case the word tells you the unit or container things come in. “palettenweise” = pallet by pallet, in very large amounts. It usually signals a big, bulk quantity — often to stress how much is being bought or moved at once.