Since school starts at 8 am, Germans have their breakfast around 7 am. Cereal, muesli, and bread with jam or Nutella are common breakfast foods; milk, chocolate milk or tea for to drink. Families buy fresh rolls at the local bakery and eat them with jams, cheese or cold cuts (Wurst). Weißwurst und Brezen (white sausages and big, chewy pretzel rolls) is a special breakfast of Bavaria. The sausage is boiled and eaten with a sweet mustard. It is never eaten or even served after 11 am.

School usually gets out at 1 pm and kids come home to have a quick and easy, warm lunch. There are ready-to-eat microwave meals, but mothers mostly cook the meals: noodles, casseroles or a rice dish. Fast food might be a weekly treat. Dinner will often be an open-faced sandwich, cold cuts (Aufschnitt) and salad (Salat). Some working families might have their warm meal in the evenings, or at least there will be a warmed up plate for the father.

On Sundays the noon meal is the traditional Sonntagsbraten. This is usually a pork or beef roast served with vegetables and potatoes. Traditional German food is not really a take-out food and it is better to sit down and eat it properly. As for take-out, Chinese food and pizza are the most common, but the pizza usually has a thin crust like it does in Italy. There are ethnic cuisines like Thai and Mexican, but these restaurants are more expensive than the Italian and Chinese restaurants that are everywhere.

Kids tend to drink less soda pop in Germany than they do in the United States. It is expensive so it is a special treat for a birthday party, perhaps. More commonly, people drink apple or orange juice, mixed with seltzer water to make a spritzer. Apfelschorle is apple juice and soda water, and Zitronenlimonade is lemonade mixed with soda water. If you order water in a restaurant it will be carbonated water and there will be a charge for it. And if there is a basket of bread on the table, you are charged for each roll or slice of bread that you eat.