Earlier this month, the proprietors of Tsukenjo Lunch House folded battered wooden doors over the entrance and slid down a buss-up plank to cover the takeout window for good.

Half a century of serving plates of shoyu chicken, roast pork and spareribs came to an end.

There was little fanfare.

TV news broadcast formulaic accounts about yet another local family enterprise disappearing from the city scene.

Nostalgia aside, Tsuken-jo’s story exhibits the evolving business climate in Honolulu: It had loyal customers, but generational and demographic changes in tastes, aggressive buzz-marketing of global chains, dwindling profits and consumers’ strange, increasing aversion for the unexpected marked it as outdated.

Even though the Dean & DeLuca in Kansas City is pretty much the same as the one in Georgetown, and will likely carry the same products as the one in Waikiki — perhaps with a trace of aloha — the chain’s image of exclusivity draws customers.

Glamour is also attractive, so when Bloomingdale’s announced it will supplant Sears at Ala Moana Center, much hyperventilating ensued. Media outlets swooned, the center’s owners saw square-foot earnings multiply and Bloomie’s executives puffed that they could serve "visitors from the U.S. mainland, Asian and worldwide," as well as local customers.

Local people who have the cash to buy at Bloomingdale’s aren’t many, but the announcement was met with oohs and aahs none-theless, followed by wishes for more mainland-international retailers to sail to island shores.

H&M has already fulfilled the desire for "affordable" designer and celebrity-linked fashions, but people are also calling for Trader Joe’s and Olive Garden, a testament to dazzling advertising and promotion.

Hawaii doesn’t suffer from a shortage of sellers. However, it is afflicted with mainland envy, a sense that shoppers in Oregon and New Jersey have something we don’t.

The idea that islanders really, really need a semi-bargain-priced, faux Italian restaurant is puzzling, except when considering television ads with glistening meat sauce hypnotically flooding steaming mounds of pasta.

Time was that few chains looked at Hawaii as a profit center, but an exploding growth in tourism had corporate brains recalibrating.

A constantly changing population of tourists brought new customers and new money flowing through the islands. While a resident couldn’t or wouldn’t buy more than one Coach bag every few years, tens of thousands of vacationing women from across the globe could and would purchase enough embossed blush-tinted totes to make setting up multiple shops in Waikiki and island malls financially rewarding.

It’s not that local people with less disposable income do not enjoy a bit of chain-store luxury. It’s that the sameness of stuff overwhelms and muddles an island identity.

Discerning tourists could eventually reject it and take their searches for authenticity elsewhere.

There is a need to retain some measure of distinctiveness and character. Sameness stifles them.

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Cynthia Oi can be reached at coi@staradvertiser.com.