ORANGE COUNTY, CA—Consumers' penchant for fast-casual restaurants and discount stores has varying impacts on grocery-anchored centers, Westwood Financial Corp.'s SVP of asset management Ken Loughran tells GlobeSt.com. We spoke exclusively with Loughran about these two emerging trends in retail and how they are affecting shopping centers.

GlobeSt.com: How is consumers' ongoing love affair with—and resulting demand for—fast-casual restaurants impacting shopping-center owners' tenant mix as we end the year and head into 2016?

Loughran: Fast-casual restaurants are a function of consumer demand, so the landlord knows which tenants are out there and will directly solicit and court those users. This will continue for the foreseeable future. I don't want to play psychologist here, but why is this demand happening? Time. It takes less time to eat at a fast-casual restaurant, it takes no time to prepare it and, in our society, time is at a premium—especially for families with busy sports and activities schedules. Fast casual is a benefit to just about every tenant mix because it brings consumers in for a shorter period of time so there's parking-space turnover and great visibility for tenants.

GlobeSt.com: Discount retailers are also in high demand. How is this sector impacting tenant mix heading into next year?

Loughran: Discount retailers can mean you're somewhat down-marketing your shopping center, and it can be a challenge where you have what you believe to be a better center, but you have a space that's difficult to lease. This is a battle every landlord faces. The good thing is discount stores take up a lot of space; the bad is they marginalize your shopping center and don't pay a lot of rent. However, that being said, we have re-leased space to discounters based in what we consider better centers, and we don't feel that they've impacted in a negative way the perception of these centers. In many of these centers, discount-store tenants have become more accepted; Goodwill has upgraded its image, and with the proliferation of discounters like Dollar Tree and Family Dollar, their ubiquitous nature has made them more acceptable.

GlobeSt.com: What other new trends are you noticing in the retail sector?

Loughran: The shaved-ice trend is hopefully not a repeat of the frozen-yogurt trend of the '80s, where they come and go and reappear 30 years later. In our centers, we're seeing a lot of shaved-ice and vapor-cigarette tenants come into the market. These are not new, but continuing trends. The Sprints and T-Mobiles of the world are still seeking sites on a national and franchisee level, and they're probably the most dominant of the service tenants that are out there.

GlobeSt.com: What else should our readers know about this topic?

Loughran: The demand for fast-casual restaurants will continue because the consumer is pressed for time and wants a nice environment to get a reasonably quick meal for a good price. The slow recovery of the economy out of the recession will continue to spur discount retailers to do more deals. I see those hot trends continuing.