A buckling floor outside a supermarket in the inner-Brisbane suburb of West End prompted the evacuation of a shopping centre on Friday afternoon.

Movement under a tiled floor in The Markets West End dislodged tiles in ridges along the floor outside the Coles supermarket.

Tiles are lifting and a large section of the shopping centre floor has rippled. ( Supplied )

About 60 people were moved outside to a street-level car park while police and fire crews inspected the damage.

There is an underground car park directly beneath the supermarket and some cars were moved as a precaution, but others were trapped underground for about 90 minutes while the car park was cordoned off by police.

A spokesperson for The Markets said the movement was in the centre's first floor.

"Engineers are currently on site inspecting the damaged area. Initial advice indicates movement in an expansion joint has caused the flooring tiles to buckle and raise," the spokesperson said.

"The flooring is currently being removed to allow the slab to be inspected. The centre is closed while the engineering inspection is finalised.

"There has been no collapse of the floor structure and no injuries. We apologise for any inconvenience to tenants, customers and local residents resulting from the closure."

In a memo to staff posted on Facebook, the management of Coles West End said the centre would reopen on Saturday.

"The centre is structurally safe, we will be receiving loads tonight and filling but store closed for remainder of the day," the post said.

A spokeswoman for The Markets West End also said structural inspections by engineers overnight and early on Saturday morning had cleared the centre to reopen at 10:00am.

Shop owner says he felt ground move

Optometrist Daniel Chebib works nearby and said he had never seen anything like it.

"I saw that all the tiles had just been buckled up from the bottle shop right across the whole pavement of Coles so there's about three or four different zig-zag rows of tiles," he said.

"As we were walking back up the ramp towards Coles we did feel a bit of ground movement and at that point we did just evacuate and leave everything and move right out.

"When I was first told it didn't sound that scary but when I walked up and saw the tiles I thought yeah definitely something's going on here and when I felt that ground move, [I] definitely got out then."

Mr Chebib said when he felt the building move it was "a little bit of a sway" like being at sea.

"I've been there since 2000, so 18 years, and never [seen] anything like that ever before.

"I had spoken to the centre management and they said they would keep us informed with what's going on. Nothing is being said at this stage, they have got engineers in there assessing they safety of the venue."

It is not clear at this stage what caused the problem with the floor. ( ABC News: Mark Slade )

'You could hear it,' shopper says

Taylor Formby was at an appointment in the centre when security evacuated all the stores, leaving her car stuck in the underground car park.

"They weren't able to tell you what was going on, which is really bad, so I was just sort of stuck," she said.

Taylor Formby said they were told very little after being evacuated. ( ABC News )

Ms Formby said it looked like there had been an "earthquake".

"You could hear it and then you could see the actual ground … it was pretty full on," she said.

"I was obviously really worried that my car would be crushed, but yeah, I'm happy to get it out and that no-one got hurt or anything," she said.

She said after about 90 minutes she was told she could get her car out.

"There's been no damage to the cars, which makes me really, really happy because I was just terrified that things were just going to crash on my car."

But she was not so happy about how the centre communicated with shoppers.

"It was like 'oh evacuate, we can't tell you anything we don't know what to do'… it would have been nicer if they got it together a bit more."