I've seen a few posts recently from shoppers looking for dining companions, and have occasionally connected with other shoppers from the forum for coffee or drinks when they were in my area, so I was thinking that perhaps there could be an area added to the forum for shopper meet-ups.
I think it would probably require a new section of the forum to be created, since having to weed through all requests in one thread may be tedious, but if there were different threads for L.A., Miami,NYC, etc. it would make it easier to connect with other shoppers in your particular area.
I know there are tons of social media options for getting people together already, but in my experience, if you are looking for a guest on an assignment, another shopper makes a very well behaved guest.