With a new focus on food offerings and increased socialization, today's shopping centers are increasingly swapping out their clothing retailers for the latest restaurant trends and foodie-driven eateries.

For retail owners, this means re-focusing tenanting efforts to keep up with food-lovers' demand and to keep centers relevant for today's consumers. Today's consumers are certainly more sophisticated then generations past, and are no longer settling for the cookie-cutter chain restaurants and traditional dessert offerings that once reigned supreme.

Of course, the trend of restaurants and new food concepts dominating the retail landscape comes with some disadvantages. For instance, trendy eateries tend to have shorter life spans - on average three to five years, versus the traditional seven to ten years that chain restaurants enjoy. This is due to consumers' ever changing tastes in today's market, which is a result of consumers being consistently exposed to new food trends and concepts from throughout the country as well as globally. This exposure continues to evolve our palates, and as a result, the food we seek from retailers.

While this increased turnover can certainly be a challenge for retail owners, it can also be a lucrative opportunity. Frequent tenant changes can give retail owners a chance to secure higher rents as new eateries come in. There is also an opportunity to increase shopping center occupancy with new food-focused tenants. In fact, we're seeing food retailers/restaurants increasing their occupancy in shopping centers on average from 10 to 20 percent, and up to 30 to 40 percent in many cases.

Even as “foodmania” rages on, it's important to note that more traditional retailers such as fashion/clothing stores in malls, or nail salons and dry cleaners in strip centers, are not disappearing altogether. Instead, these important retailers are converging into the live/work/play mentality of today's consumer base, resulting in an increase in mixed-use developments that combine entertainment, shopping, and housing.

Overall, as retail continues its current evolution, we will see continued diversity in food offerings coupled with a strong increase in entertainment-focused concepts. With that in mind, retail owners would certainly be wise to jump on the food and entertainment train, before it passes them by.