Business ProfileforTacos ala Mexicana

I booked a catering dinner from ***** at Tacos a la mexicana for my friend's 50th birthday (her name is ********, as you will see on the texts) at Hicksville Trailer Palace in Joshua Tree for Feb 12, for about 50 people. We checked in with ***** (the owner) many times, and pre-paid him for the event, including an ask the day before for the full balance, because he "was out of town and needs to pay the person coming." I felt uneasy about pre-paying, but trusted the business. On Sat morning, he said daniel (the person who was coming) is unavailable, so ***** is coming (somehow not out of town anymore) and will be late. Then he asked if we could do drop off instead of catering, and we reluctantly agreed with a discount. Then, at 430 (he was scheduled to be there at 5 for drop off) i texted and he said he is not coming until 6 because the "food is being prepared and is almost ready." at 6 pm, he sent a message saying he is not coming and will refund our money. We had to work with the accommodation staff to find a pizza place open and feed the people there, which was insane and stressful and awful. He also never refunded the money- he had a million excuses and then stopped responding. We were able to get $200 back from Venmo, but he still owes us $800 for the event he not only did not do, but he also completely flaked AFTER the time he was supposed to come, and then never gave us our money back. Its insane and ruined a very important evening. We've asked Hicksville to take them off their catering list. I have text messages, Venmo receipts, etc for all of this, and the staff at Hicksville can testify to the events, as they were there and saw it all happen. I don't want to have to go to court-- we just want our money back for services that were NOT provided, and were cancelled in the rudest, most irresponsible and unprofessional way I have ever experienced.