If it had been 30 seconds earlier Kaz VanReemst and his daughter would not be alive today.

VanReemst and his 9-year-old daughter are counting their lucky stars after narrowly escaping a car that ploughed through an Auckland bakery.

The car came to a halt just inches from the store's front counter as they went to pay for their food, VanReemst said.

The incident happened on Monday afternoon at Golden Sand Bakery on Mahurangi East Rd in Snells Beach.

VanReemst and his daughter had just left school and were off to the bakery to get a pie for him and a treat for her, he said.

After perusing the selection and heading to the counter to pay he heard a loud crash and was showered in glass.

"She had just finished school and I hadn't eaten lunch and we pulled in here. Got the stuff out of the cabinet and was standing there paying.

"30 seconds earlier when we were looking in the food cabinets and we would have been gone," he said.

When the car came to a halt it was just centimetre from them and about 1 metre from the front counter

"The car was still revving but she [the driver] managed to turn it off."

The first thing he did was take his daughter outside and check she was OK.

Apart from a couple of small cuts on her ankle and glass in her hair, she was in good shape but the experience had scared her.

"She had some nightmares last night.

"You don't have time to think about it. It was a fight or flight thing."

After checking on his daughter he went back into the bakery to check on the driver who told him she had a heart attack after she went to leave the chemist.

"She thought she had a heart attack. She got in the car and whatever happened, happened."

Today he was off to get a Lotto ticket, he said.

His wife, Casey, was distraught when they returned home and he recounted the incident.

She said her daughter had nightmares all through the night and had not left her side since.

Renae Beaumont said she saw the entire event unfold from outside as she was walking home from the dairy with her mother.

She heard someone reverse "very fast out on to the road" and the car did a 90-degree burnout before heading into the bakery.

"She would have been going over 50km/h.

"It was a decent half circle before she hit the bakery but she was going too fast it was a matter of seconds."

The bakery was one of seven businesses on the road and the dairy was at the other end, where the car had been parked, she said.

"There's a row of about seven shops, dairy at one end bakery at the other, then the main road behind, the car parks are right outside the shop, she was at the other end."